Raven's Howl
by twistedpremise
Summary: Raven's communicator is broken during a fight, so she calls Changeling for backup another way. What happens when something gets added in translation? BB/Rae, mild Rob/Star, if it didn't deserve the M before, it does now, though there's still no lemon, just some steamy goodness.
1. Chapter 1

It started out as a simple patrol. Beast Boy and Raven were each patrolling opposite ends of town, maintaining a public presence that reminded everyone, civilian or villain, that the Titans were watching over Jump City. They'd long since ceased patrolling in pairs, their communicators and individual developments made communication and self-defense more than sufficient to keep themselves safe until backup arrived, if backup was even necessary. It had been two years since defeating the brotherhood of evil in Paris, and The Titans (Teen no longer applying to most of them) had grown.

Well, most of them had, at least. Raven was now the shortest on the team, much to Beast B- sorry, Changeling's good humor. Of course, she still threw him into the bay on occasion, mostly to remind him that she still could when he drove her particularly crazy, but they'd mostly settled into a comfortable antagonism that consisted of him pestering her to stretch her comfort zone, her dry humor at his expense (which he took with good, if sometimes pouty, humor), and her eye-rolling tolerance of his light flirtatiousness. If it were anyone but Changeling it would probably come across as annoying, but his lighthearted nature (and her quick one-liners) ensured that it was simply, as he put it, "part of his charm."

Cyborg hadn't changed much, mostly just technological advances. Recent military and cellular advancements equipped him with greater range, firepower, and a jump literally capable of entering a skyscraper on the 80th floor, but his personality never wavered from the big-brother to all, boss-to-none enthusiasm. He'd lost his trademark "booyah," in public when the internet decided it belonged in the 80's and made a meme of photoshopped pictures of him with an afro and disco pants, but he would still use the phrase every now and then among Titans.

Robi- sorry again, Nightwing and Starfire were the ultimate yo-yo of a relationship. Had Robin been the type to spend their rough periods in a bar they'd have graced TMZ with more material than even the Titan's fanbase could stomach, but considering the start, middle and end to all their drama took place in the either evidence room or robin's office, the public remained blissfully unaware of it all.

With his new persona, Nightwing had also grown to just over 6', and maintained the physique of an acrobat. Even Changeling sported more muscle mass, though he was still on the slender side of the spectrum. He'd gotten comparisons to an MMA fighter before, middle-class or lighter. Cyborg, made up for them both, looking for all the world like a Champion Heavyweight Boxer when he used the Holo-rings to disguise his cybernetic parts.

The Girls had changed physically, as well. Starfire opted for purple shorts instead of her younger mini-skirts (possibly robin's influence, since she still seemed naïve enough not to have noticed the amateur photographers hoping for an upskirt shot), and her crop-top was filled out in a way that made Robin the envy of many, many men. She stood at 5'11" in heels and/or her platform boots, and her favorite thing to do was enjoy the "perfection of height differences" between her and Robin by going dancing.

Raven snorted with the thought. "As though height matters all that much when you're grinding."

So distracted was Raven by her reflections that she missed the shot of electricity launched from the roof of a media building until it seared her side, knocking her out of flight onto a gravel rooftop.

"Ow" she groaned, checking for vital damage. Finding none, she reached for her communicator. "That's either Overload, or someone just as strong. Better call for Backup."

"_Shit"_ she thought, as her communicator had been destroyed by the blast. She weighed her options: fight, run, or defend until help arrived. Screams from the street made her mind up for her.

Rising from the rooftop, she surveyed the scene. It was indeed overload, targeting a small concert in the park. "_He must have_ _been attracted by the electric lights and speakers,"_ she reasoned, and prepared to engage the energy being. Before she could engage, however, Overload seemed to direct his (its?) attention to a young girl and her mother, most likely attracted to the concert from the nearby playground.

Without thinking, Raven phased in front of the two bystanders and raised a shield of obsidian energy. Not a moment later, a powerful and sustained bolt of energy danced across the dome, intent on frying the three protected women. Raven grunted an focused intently on the shield. Overload had learned from his past defeat at Raven's hands, and gave her not a moment to rest or direct her attentions on the offensive. The energy spike danced across the protective bubble, fast, thin, and wickedly strong, forcing Raven to rapidly fluctuate the strength of her barrier to prevent weakening in one place.

_I need backup_, she thought, _I can't risk dropping my defenses to attack him, and this park doesn't have any large fountains or sprinklers to use against him if I did. Without my communicator, there's no way to reach the tower. I have to contact Changeling… _

Searching for a solution, Raven's mind flashed back to a conversation she'd had with the green young man a few weeks prior, when Changeling had taken to engaging Raven in little trivia games, particularly when she attempted meditating in the common room.

"Hey Raven," the resident shape-changer called out from his place on the couch. "U know how wolves howl at the moon, right?"

He continued without getting a response "Actually, that's a common misconception, we actually howl to gather the pack for a hunt, normally."

He'd also taken to talking about animals he formed frequently in first-person. She wasn't sure what to think about that.

"It's actually a lot like Robin's whole 'Titan's GO' thing, really. And that makes us a pack! Robin's the alpha, the bad guys are the prey, and our communicators are like the wolf call! They've even got a similar range, about 10 miles, without cell service!?

"Fascinating." Raven deadpanned, and returned to her mantra…. "Azerath Metrion Zinthos….

Okay, maybe "conversation" was too strong of a word. Nonetheless, it brought up an possible solution out of her predicament.

Diverting as little attention away from her current task as she could, Raven invoked one of her simpler spells: "Vocalon Endium Desheeray!"

At first, nothing happened, and Raven prepared to try another, more complicated version. Before she could, though, the howl of a majestic, proud grey wolf echoed through the park, calling, no _demanding_, the presence of its' pack.

At the sound, Overload paused, then redoubled his efforts to penetrate the dark shell protecting the one person who'd defeated him more than any other. _Azar, I hope that worked. _Raven thought, as she focused everything she had to blocking that erratic lightning pounding away at her defenses.

Just as she felt her energy reserves begin to drain, however, she heard the howl again: deeper this time, and growing stronger. Out of a grove of trees came great Wolf, easily five feet at the shoulder, with fangs bared and barreling toward Overload. A green blur in the open field, it-no, HE- covered half the distance before Overload redirected his attentions away from the girls.

Raven released the protective dome and collapsed, maintaining only enough energy to watch as Overload fired bolt after bolt at the grey wolf, none able to match the wolf's agility as Changeling closed the distance between them. The wolf leaped, and just before making contact- he shifted- taking the form of a large pacific ray, one of the many members of the Ray family which use electricity to hunt. Though Overload was a being of energy and silicon, it had largely exhausted itself with its sustained assault on Raven, and Changeling's rapid transformations between electric eels and rays eventually drained it of its embodied energy. It was only then that Changeling reverted back to human form.

"Friend Changeling! Friend Raven!" Starfire called out, coming in hot from a clearly panicked flight. "Are you unharmed?" Raven saw the T-car pull up moments later.

"Yeah Star, we're good," Changeling wheezed, offering a weak thumbs-up from his position on his hands and knees.  
"Yo, what happened here?" Cyborg had his arm cannon charged as he ran to the field.

"Overload," Raven deadpanned, holding up his master chip by way of explanation.

"And he did this to you two?" Cyborg was flabbergasted.

"Yeah, he just came from that giant HD-TV display on main street, I passed in on the way here" Changeling offered, patting down his singed hair, which was still smoking at its points.

"Factor in the absence of water, and that he got the first hit while I was distracted, and you've got the whole picture," Raven finished, rising to her feet.

"I'm sorry guys, we came as soon as you called, Changeling" Robin completed. "If Raven's communicator was destroyed without a distress call, how did you know she needed help, anyway?"

Of course Robin noticed the communicator dust on her hip. "I called him" Raven supplied. "I remembered him telling me that some animals, particularly wolves, can communicate long distances. So I used a simple charm to produce a wolf howl, hoping he would get the message and find me. Clearly he did."

Changeling surprised her by blushing and looking away. "Yeah, uh, about that. You probably don't want to use that one again, if you can help it. Or maybe just practice your Wolf or something…"

Raven raised an eyebrow. "And why is that? It worked, didn't it?"

"Well, yeah," Changeling seemed to look anywhere but at Raven. "But you didn't use that hunting call…"

"I do not understand," interjected Starfire. "Earth Wolves have different howls for different occasions? If not the call of hunting or distress, what howl did friend Raven use?"

"Um, well, it's kinda embarrassing…" Changeling muttered.

Raven however, was getting frustrated. Maybe it was overload, maybe it was Changeling's accidental dismissal of her possibly life-saving solution, all she knew was she got sarcastic. "No, Garfield, please, tell us _exactly_ what it was about my howl that was so wrong. I wouldn't want to _embarrass _you again. "

"No, it's not that," Changeling was almost pleading, looking for an escape…

"Then what was it?"

"IT WAS A MATING CALL, OKAY?" Changeling blurted out, shifting into a turtle in preparation for an obsidian-energy punting into the bay.

Except it never happened.

Raven just stood there, as her friends processed the idea.

"Friend Raven… propositioned… friend Changeling?" Starfire querried.

"No Star," Nightwing tried to clarify, "it's more like, well… yes, but, it was an accident."

With that, Raven seemed to shake herself out of her stupor. "Of course." She clarified. "My spell manifested a re-creation of what I understood a wolf call to sound like. The only time I've heard a wolf was national geographic, so that must have been what my subconscious manifested when emulating a wolf call." She blinked twice, and looked at the green turtle, who was reluctantly daring to stick his head out of his shell. "Thank you for responding regardless, and for your help with Overload. Also, thank you for contacting the others, that was a good move, given the circumstances."

Changeling shifted back to his human form, still sitting on the ground as he scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "Yeah, well, uh, you're welcome. Sorry about the wolf mix-up thing, I know you don't speak wolf." He visibly brightened with an idea. "Oh, next time there's a full moon out, I'll do a real wolf hunting call, that way if you ever need to do that spell-thingy again, you'll have the right howl to base it off of!"

Raven only nodded in response, her mind elsewhere.

"Well, Rae's gonna need some time to recover from that electricity burn, and BB just took a live wire to the head, so I'm gonna drive these two back to the tower," Cyborg announced.

"Good Idea Cyborg," Nightwing agreed. "Star and I will cover the rest of their patrol. We'll see you in a couple hours."

As soon as the on-again-off-again couple (who were currently on) were out of earshot, Cyborg and Changeling started betting how far into the patrol route they'd get before they stopped to make out. Raven interrupted with "I'll see you both at the tower, I need to meditate" and phased into a black pool into her bedroom, reaching immediately for her Nevermore mirror.

"Now," she whispered, "let's figure out how a spell for summoning something of need/desire inadvertently turns into a booty-call."


	2. The Nevermore Chapter

Xbakiyalo- Hey, I remember you! Thanks for the feedback, I hope I didn't stretch Raven a bit too far for your distinctly Canon tastes with this chapter. My goal was to keep her the same, just more thought-out and with a few years' growth. Look for a humor story next, I've got an idea for a real gut-buster. Oh, n I 'll get right back on The Slade Contract soon, I promise!

Sharpclaws- Thanks, I wasn't sure if this was going to be a one-shot or not, especially since I was intimidated by the idea of a Nevermore chapter, but I hope I did it justice in your eyes.

Annatheavidreader- So, a little less (read, no) action in this one, sorry, just a lot of my favorite witty banter, but if you're looking for comedy & romance, you'll love what I have planned for Chapter 3. Also, thanks for the bit about wolves & ravens, I might be able to work with that here in a chapter or two.

Author's Note: Hey Guys, if you're a fan of my writing style, I'd love it it you were to swing on over to my other story, The Slade Contract, where I explore Slade and his motivations. I know, most of us don't really care for Slade-centric stories, normally I don't either, but I promise this is worth your time. Give it a shot, n if you don't like the first chapter you can let me know in the reviews and I'll shift my focus on the one with more fan-base. Now back to the BB-RAE!

The defeat of Trigon, and several years development and experience as both a hero and a person had done wonders for Raven. She still meditated, of course, but it had long since ceased being a desperate plug-the-cracks-in-dam exercise, and instead served to do what meditation was designed for: sharpen focus, reveal and resolve inner turmoil, and achieve a calm, balanced state of mind.

At least, as calm and balanced as can be achieved by an empath living in close quarters to Changeling and Starfire.

The changes were subtle, but her friends noticed. She joked more often, snorted off Changeling's antics rather than getting upset, did more with the Titans, and had less frequent outburst of energy when her emotions spiked. Her personality never changed, of course, but her team wouldn't have it any other way.

Time had been good to Raven, and it showed in Nevermore. The rigidly defined "territories" of her aspects began sharing borders, and even overlapping on occasion. As Raven experienced more, the simplicity of rigid emoticlones began to blur, and while yes, there were still little people living in her head, Raven found each of them to have more than a single facet. This made sense, of course. Nobody experiences only a fixed set of emotions; there are many spectrums of feeling, most composed of other, more basic emotions. Thus, there were six core emotions in permanent physical form in Raven's mind, plus Reason, Apathy, and Empathy (which are not technically emotions, and why Raven considered her Doppelgangers to be "Aspects.") The emoticlones were Anger (formerly known as Rage under her Father's influence), Fear, Bravery, Affection, Joy, and Sadness. Raven had occasionally encountered others, manifestations of other emotions generated by the convergence of two or even three "core emotions". Once, Raven had spent an hour conversing with Amusement, the product of joy and affection.

But Raven wasn't here looking for emotions, she was here for answers….

A Yellow Raven with glasses poured two cups of tea, settling into an armchair in a library that would have made Alexander the Great weep for joy.

The doors to the library slammed open so hard she could feel it.

"How?" The blue cloaked Titan demanded, marching toward the embodiment of knowledge.

"How to you too," Reason quipped, raising a palm in the pseudo-Native American greeting.

A vein pulsed in Raven's forehead. "Not what I meant. How did that happen? That was a simple spell, Vocalon Endium Desheerey. Translated: Vocalize End Desire." She paused for breath. "I wanted a call for help, not to…"

"Proposition a sexual favor?"

"Yes!... Wait, No!... You know what I mean" Raven finished lamely, flopping down in the empty armchair to face her counterpart.

"Indeed I do, but I'm afraid my answers are not going to be to your liking…" Reason offered the second cup of tea.

"What do you mean?" Raven sounded nervous as she accepted the cup.

"Well, we know that the spell itself was spoken correctly. There were no mistakes with grammer, phonetic pronunciation, or the energy called upon to cast it." Reason held out three fingers. "There are only three things which can significantly alter the results of a spell that simple. One, the casting of the spell." She folded a finger down. "We know there was no problem there."

Raven nodded, warily.

"Two, the conscious mind when casting the spell." Reason pulled out a remote, activating a projector which began playing an out-of-body perspective of Raven during the fight with Overload. "If we fast forward to the moment of summoning the activation energy, what was on your mind?"

"Call for help" Raven responded immediately.

"Let's double-check that, just to be sure" Reason stated diplomatically. She froze the video on the word 'Deshereey' and pressed a button. Speakers resting behind the bookcases echoed in Raven's voice, "Call Changeling."

"Hmm, minor discrepancy there, could leave some room for interpretation" Reason mused, as Raven went still. "A completely understandable thought, at the time. The Tower was across the city and over the bay, Garfield was our nearest source of assistance, as well as the only person who could interpret a wolf howl as a summons." Reason supplied herself with another refill before continuing.

"Now, the final thing which can shape a spell of such vague nature would be the subconscious will, namely Us," Reason spread her hands to indicate the entirety of Nevermore. "The word Desire can have many interpretations, and while Assistance was certainly the one your conscious mind intended, it is possible that another Aspect of your inner self influenced the charm." Reason stopped to sip her tea, and awaited Raven's response.

The teacup nearly cracked in two as Raven set it on the table, but she barely seemed to take notice. "Who?" she demanded. "Was it Anger, trying to set up a fight? Empathy, picking up on nearby sexual energy?"

"To be honest, I don't _know_," Reason supplied. "As much as I represent knowledge, I am limited by your own memory and knowledge sources." She paused for effect, enjoying the tease. "Now, as the representation of reason and rational deduction, I could make a guess or two…"

"Then guess."

"But to be honest, you've overlooked the obvious to quickly, it makes me wonder if you really want me to" Reason finished, reaching behind her for a leather-bound book.

She didn't get there before her wrist was covered in black energy.

"What… exactly… is that supposed to mean?" Raven's voice got cold.

"Well, why do most people engage in sex?" Reason put it bluntly.

The shock dispersed the black energy. "Hormones." Raven deadpanned.

Reason mimicked a buzzer. "Wrong. For most people, sex is about Affection."

The thought of her purple-clad emoticlone caused Raven's eyes to glaze as she processed Reason's assertion. "Not possible," she finally spoke. "I've never felt anything of that… nature, towards Garfield."

"No?" Reason feigned disinterest behind her book. "Then maybe I'm wrong. Still though, if you wanna talk to her before you leave, I'd suggest you head over. If his pattern holds, Garfield's going to be knocking on your door to check in soon."

Satisfied that the conversation had reached it's end, Raven stood, walking back towards the still adjacent door.

"Oh, and Raven?" Reason called. "You never actually apologized to the poor guy for your attitude after Overload. He WAS just trying not to embarrass you, after all."

Raven blushed as she recalled her behavior before the "mating call" revelation. She nodded, and slipped out, unsure where to go next.

Wandering through the mindscape, Raven pondered her conversation with Reason. Despite the ridiculous speculation as to affection's involvement or lack thereof, the fact remained that only a subconscious Aspect could have molded the spell in that way.

So distracted was Raven with this puzzle that she didn't notice where she was until it was too late.

"Raven!" a violet blur wrapped Raven in a bear hug, picking her up off the ground and spinning. "You NEVER come to visit! I should go grab happy, she'll want to see you too!"

"Ach, Affection, put me down" Raven squirmed. "Azar, you're almost as bad as Happy these days."

"Oops, sorry," Affection seemed politely chagrined as she returned Raven to solid ground. "So, what brings you by?"

Raven brushed herself off. _Well, might as well settle the matter while I'm here_, she mused. "Actually, Affection, I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh?" Affection brightened. It seems any form of interaction made the violet girl's day. "What's up?"

"My powers malfunctioned during the… incident… with Overload. Somehow, what was intended to be a simple call for backup turned into something… else." Raven narrowed her gaze on her emoticlone. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"Malfunctioned? You mean like, explosion-malfunction?" Affection ignored the question.

"Not quite." Raven struggled to find the words. "Apparently, my summons involved an invitation I hadn't intended to send." Affection still looked confused. "A sexual invitation."

At this, Affection's eyes twinkled, something Raven really hadn't wanted to see.

Her response, however, was even more surprising. "And that wasn't you?"

"What, NO!" Raven defended. "I've never felt anything of that… nature…"

"Aqualad." Affection countered.

"THAT WAS A CRUSH!" Raven's voice betrayed panic. She took a deep breath to center herself. "That was a passing crush, nothing serious. And certainly nothing…"

"Malchior."

"BY AZAR IF YOU BRING THAT UP AGAIN I WILL…"

"Okay, okay, I got it!" Affection placated, trying not to grin. "But still, my point is made. You're not asexual Raven, you're still a human girl. Worse, you're part demon, and we both know THEY like sex." She paused. "You shouldn't be embarrassed by wanting sex, especially with…"

"Let's get one thing straight" Raven interrupted. "I did not, and do not, want to have any form of **intimate** relations with Changeling." Raven paused to breathe. "I came here to see if you affected the spell in any way without my knowledge, but it's obvious you didn't."

Raven turned to leave.

"Oh, but what if I did?" Affection teased from behind her. "What if, deep down, you actually aren't as annoyed by his attentions as you act?" Raven paused, and Affection grinned in earnest. "What if, you actually **like** them? What if you don't mind the way he knocks on our door for dinner every day, or hovers just a little bit closer than necessary during combat? What if I took advantage of the way his gaze rests just a **little** too long when you're stretching, or the way yours lingers when he spars with Nightwing?"

"Stop it," Raven muttered, shaking her head.

Affection continued, her voice taking a new, sultry tone. "What if you'd like to know more, huh? I know I would. I'm not just friendly or sisterly affection you know, I feel all the urges you do. After all, you're 22, he's 21, maybe you just invite him in after meditation one evening for a cup of tea? He's so sweet, he'd probably be worried about you, wouldn't even recognize it as an invitation. Maybe you'd have to howl for him again, see where it goes…"

"I said STOP!" Raven whirled back to her purple counterpart. "Changeling is a good friend and valuable ally. I will not have you suggesting anything otherwise." And then the implication of what Affection revealed with her innuendo hit her. "I never said anything about howling… It WAS you!"

"Took you long enough."

"All right, let's get one thing straight between us. I am not, have never been, and never will be sexually interested in Garfield."

"Okay, okay." Affection seemed satisfied with her teasing. "There's nothing there, got it. Back to repression mode, wonderful. And here I thought we passed that with the Wicked Scary Incident."

Raven's teeth were grinding. "I am not repressing anything."

"Well then, you won't mind one little test, will you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"One little thing, nothing major really," Affection drawled. "Just… give him a hug."

Raven poker face revealed her complete lack of engagement with the idea. "What?"

"Just give the poor guy a hug. He certainly earned it, after saving our lives as well as the lives of the two civilians behind us. Plus, you kinda blew up on him with the whole "howling" thing, and he was just trying to be considerate…"

Raven turned to leave.

"Just think about it. One hug, and if you don't get a least a little tingly, I'll shut up for good," Affection promised.

_Too easy_. Raven considered it. _There's nothing there, she's bluffing. I'll just give him a quick hug for… apology, and this whole ordeal will be over with. _

"Deal," Raven nodded, and pulled the mirror from her pocket to return to the Tower.

The last thing she heard was Affection's happy farewell: "Talk to you soon, Raven."


	3. A simple hug (fixed)

Creatorx33: Thanks, let me know if that changes, but I hope this one doesn't disappoint.

Missafrolatina: I'll take that bet, lol. Also, happy to see somebody liked my "punch line" for chapter one, I thought it was hilarious, myself.

JOHNXgambit: I checked it out, but I have trouble following Nevermore stories that seem to pile emoticlone characters on top of each other like that. I prefer a defined number of players and an overarching logic, myself, hence the "six emotions (each with an opposite), plus reason (who's absence is the definition of irrationality, plus Empathy and Apathy.

iamking: Thanks, if you've got anything particular that you'd like me to emulate with my next chapters, let me know!

gwb620: Thanks, I always feel like I end well, I just never know if the stories are going anywhere enough, you know? This is mostly a developmental chapter, but we get two brief glimpses into Changeling's perspective, so that should flesh it out a bit more, as well.

Annatheavidreader: Thanks for the full response, always nice to hear that someone else has my same issue with Nevermore fanfic. Here's what I promised, though I kinda skirted around the "good stuff" to keep up the allure.

Xbakiyalo: You are awesome, sorry I've kept you waiting on three stories now. Hope this chapter is worth the wait!

Sharpclaws: Thanks for the encouragement, I love devious characters myself, so Affection was fun to write. I think all Raven's emotions should be at least a little devious, she is part demonic, anyway...

Darkwarrior1010: You missing our dear LamontCranston as much as I am? Lol, I appreciate the writing tips, too, I totally get where you're coming from with the "telling" vs "showing" thing, I'll try to keep it in mind. Ch. 1 was especially bad about it since I tried to set the stage quickly, too.

LiumD: I know, right? Done right, the Emoticlones are possibly the best exposition/plot device a writer could have for this show, or nearly any show, for that matter.

Kaarlinaa: I know, I just couldn't stay away myself! Sorry about the delay, I got super busy with work.

A/N: Sorry about the delay guys, I can't believe I let time slip away from me like this. Also, since I forgot to do this for previous chapters/works, here's my disclamer: I am TwistedPremise, and I own no characters, storylines, or copyrighted material even remotely related to Teen Titans. I'd say I own these premises, but even that wouldn't be true, most of them have been done before in a thousand different ways. That all being said, please enjoy!

* * *

Raven emerged from her mirror into her bedroom, reeling from her discussions with Reason and Affection. Trips to Nevermore had been getting less frequent, and less necessary, since her father's demonic influence had been conquered because the hyper-exposure to highly-concentrated individual emotions tended to briefly throw off her balance. _Nothing some traditional meditation shouldn't fix._ Raven mused, and settled into her traditional lotus position over the foot of her bed. _Though Reason's right… If the pattern holds, I should have…_ she checked the clock on her nightstand… _between ten and 15 minutes before Changeling shows up…. _

Chanting her mantra, Raven closed her eyes and focused on emptying her mind of conscious thought and reflected on the essence of her inner turmoil. Surprisingly, the calm, even state that normally only took a few minutes to reach eluded her. Brow furrowing, Raven pressed harder, attempting to quell her emotional imbalance through willpower, but it that didn't work either. _This is odd, _ Raven mused, _there's nothing particularly powerful or dramatic going on right now, now overwhelming emotions, why can't I settle down? _Nevertheless she continued chanting, letting her mind wander over her recent conversations. _Reason and Affection are right, _ she mused, _Garfield was only trying to avoid embarrassing me, and I snapped at him. He saved not only me, but the civilians I was protecting, a mother and her young daughter. I owe him an apology…_

A knock echoed at her door. _That time already? _ She looked at her clock in surprise. _Wait, he's five minutes behind "schedule," how did 20 minutes go by? _

She lowered herself down and walked to the door, stretching her empathic sense to check on her guest's emotional state. _Pretty much par for the course, _she thought. _Some confusion, a little nervousness, but mostly concern. _The combination was reassuringly familiar, and made her feel both a little guilty and oddly comfortable. _He thinks this is a standard apology to me, but really, I need to apologize to him. _

She took a breath, ensured her standard "stoic" look was in place, and buzzed the door open. Changeling had his hand raised to knock again, and in his other hand was… a cup of tea?

"Hey, Rae," he offered the still-steaming mug with an overly wide grin. _A peace offering? _ Raven almost smiled, _he's learned a thing or two over the years. Explains why he took longer than usual. _Her good humor faded though, as she accepted the cup and remembered that it wasn't Changeling who ought to be offering the apology. She took a sip of the licorice brew, her preferred tea after a draining battle.

"Thank you, Changeling, but you didn't need to do this."

"Well, I mean, I kinda embarrassed you back there, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that in front of the team like that…" Changeling had lost his habit of babbling like a complete idiot when flustered over the years, but he still stammered through most every apology. _It's actually kind of… endearing, _Raven thought idly, _easy to tell it's sincere. _

"Garfield," she cut him off, setting the tea on a bookshelf by her door. His name ensured she had his attention, and as a result, she looked straight into his eyes as she continued. "Thank you, but the apology, and the tea, are unnecessary. I should actually be apologizing to you. You not only defeated Overload and protected me that way, but then attempted to provide me the discretion of informing me of my mistake with the summoning spell." She broke eye contact to look down at her tea.

"The fact of the matter is this: my temper pushed you into revealing the mistake, despite your attempts to avoid embarrassing me. I apologize for embarrassing you, and myself, with my behavior."

Changeling was obviously surprised at her response, but his relief won out. "It's all good" His reassurance featured a grin to match the relief he was exuding. "You were wiped from fighting Overload, that'll put anyone in a rough mood." He paused, and seemed to remember something. "Hey, by the way, don't you need to get that burn checked out? I'll get Cy to the infirmary, we'll put some aloe or something on it, don't wanna risk infection or something…" He turned to hunt down his metal friend.

Raven surprised them both by grabbing his wrist. "That's really not necessary, and you know it. I'll heal myself just fine, I just need to meditate."

"Oh yeah, right." Changeling started turning back. "Still though, Cy will want to make sure…"

* * *

All in all, this was one of his better apologies. He'd brought tea, gotten his apology out, and Raven even let him off the hook without so much as a "don't do it again." He was halfway through convincing her (or attempting, at least) to get the electric burn checked when he suddenly found his mouth and brain entirely incapable of functioning. In the past 12 hours he'd witnessed Cyborg eating 10 animals he'd personally become, walked in on Robin and Starfire making out, and taken who-know-how-many Kilowatts from absorbing and dispersing Overload, but none of those experiences shocked him into freezing up like this. He looked down slowly to confirm that yes, Raven, **the** Raven, stoic superheroine extraordinaire, had her arms around him in what could only be defined as a bear hug. It was funny, really, her head barely touched his chin when he looked down, but somehow it just felt… right… like, really right, like, downright comfortable, stay-here right… _What is going on? _ In his surprise, he didn't even manage to return the gesture before she broke off, hood suddenly up, and stood in the doorway. _Quick man, _he thought, _don't just stand here like an idiot, say something…._

* * *

"That…. That was… What was that for?" Changeling managed to get out, as Raven regained her composure. _Oh Azar_ she thought_… what do I say now? _ She hadn't meant to do that, but when he'd turned, her hand on his wrist, she knew she wouldn't have another opportunity. _Why didn't I think this through? _

"The young girl behind me." Raven's half-whisper surprised herself. "When you stopped Overload, you didn't just rescue me, you saved a mother and her second-grade daughter." Both Raven and Changeling blinked as they processed this. "I'm an Empath, remember? I felt what they felt in that moment. They knew I was at my limit, but they didn't know help was on the way. You saved them, Garfield, and… the circumstances didn't let her, but the little girl wanted nothing more in that moment than to run up and give you a hug. I thought I'd pass it along."

A pause settled between them, until Raven broke it again, surprising even herself.

"It's also from me." Changelings eyes widened, not that she could see that, as she appeared fascinated by her elf-shoes. "I send an obscure call for help, and you not only answer, you put yourself in the direct path of electrocution to do so. You tried to protect me from embarrassment, and I snap at you. You didn't need to check up on me, or be concerned about a simple burn, or even apologize, but here you are- with tea, no less."

Changeling chuckled at that. "Yeah, I hope the tea's okay, by the way…."

Raven picked the cup up from where she'd set it by the door. It was a little cool by now, but still brewed, and sweetened, the way she liked it. "It's perfect. Thank you."

"You know," Changeling's voice picked up a little humor, "I could get used to hearing that..." He adopted a false feminine voice: "Thank you, Changeling," "you're so awesome Changeling," "You make the best tea ever, Changeli…"

"Aaand there goes the moment." Raven deadpanned.

Changeling just beamed an overtly cheesy grin. "Eh, easy come, easy go" he joked. "You sure you don't want to go to the infirmary?"

"I will be fine. I just need to meditate." She paused. "And sleep. Nighttime patrols are bad enough without shielding a lighting-bolt for ten minutes."

"Nah, not me, I've got juice to spare. Maybe I absorbed some of Overload's… Hey, maybe that'll speed up my reaction time: I'm gonna go beat Cy's high score at MegaMonkeys!" Changeling did, in fact seem particularly energized.

"You go do that" stoic raven was back in perfect form, hiding her amusement well as she stepped back to operate her door.

"Will do," Garfield's peppy reply came back. "Goodnight Rae!"

The door shut and locked, and Changeling made his way to the elevator. Rather than selecting the main floor, however, Changeling pressed the level for the Titan's gym. Only once the door closed did he release a deep breath, slinking against the wall. "No, no gamestation," a gravelly voice only he could hear seemed to say. "Turn around now and claim…"

"No." Changeling whispered, clenching his fists. "Not now, not again." The elevator door opened and he made his way to the heavy bag with strong, purposeful strides. He had too much energy for Gamestation anyway.

* * *

Meanwhile, in Raven's room, two light bulbs, a vase, and every one of her pillows lay in pieces. Raven herself was breathing heavily, sitting on the floor with her back to the door, processing everything with a slight look of panic in her glazed eyes. _It was nothing. It wasn't anything. He's a strong, athletic young man and a thoughtful, well-intentioned teammate. Nothing more._

_ Oh, Raven, _an overly-sweet voice with a smug inflection whispered, _I thought you said you **weren't **repressing anything… Like I said, talk to you soon…_


	4. Changeling- the aftermath

A/N: Wow! So many reviews, so quickly! Love all the encouragement guys, definitely inspires a guy to write and post more often! So, here's the thing, I'm in the market for a Beta reader, someone to help with grammar, spelling, and the like, since my process is basically just "write and post" right now. If you're interested, message me. In the meantime, I thought I'd replace my shoutouts with a kind of "author's explanation" for the chapter, if that's okay.

So, this chapter caught me by surprise. I really intended this story to be Garfield-centric, but when I started writing I realized that I wanted to keep him kind of mysterious, reveal things only in bits and pieces. To accomplish this, I wrote from Raven's perspective. But after Nevermore chapter, I knew I needed to dive into Changeling a bit more, so I used a surprising new perspective to draw Changeling out and reveal more about what's going on in his head. Of course, then I had to twist it at the end with a glimpse into Garfield's mind... hehehe.

So, without further ado: I don't own the Teen Titans, or any of their related intellectual property/copyright, I just play here.

-TwistedPremise

* * *

Nightwing and Starfire came in from patrol around three in the morning. Starfire floated off to bed, happy with a goodnight kiss, leaving Nightwing to go through his nightly routine. After ensuring that all the security systems were active and functional, Nightwing did a walk-through of the tower, checking on teammate locations and statuses. This also gave him a chance to practice his deductive reasoning, a skill his old mentor had insisted on but didn't get much practice against meta-humans.

The basement hadn't seen any activity, and the garage seemed unchanged since this morning. The tools were still where they'd been when Changeling had called them out to the park, so aside from parking the T-car, it didn't seem like Cyborg had done anything in this space.

The common room, however, certainly showed signs of Cyborg, though surprisingly none of Changeling. The grill had been used but the dishes had been done, suggesting Cyborg had eaten alone, as he tended to get distracted by video games or TV shows and put off dishes when the shapeshifter was around. The unkempt seasoning bottles suggested he had left either distractedly or in a hurry, which was a bit unusual. Most likely, he had gotten a phone call, though who or why was uncertain. _That's been happening a lot, recently. _Nightwing noted. _And the T-car hasn't had an oil change in two months. Has Cyborg got a relationship we don't know about? _

Stopping by the evidence room, Nightwing checked the door-access patterns on his computer. Open-close pattern indicated a long (for Raven, at least) conversation with someone around 10:00, most likely Changeling. If Raven stayed in her room after the conversation, then three bedrooms were currently occupied, hers, Starfire's, and Cyborg's. _Why not Changeling's?_ Nightwing wondered, as he keyed in a query for all doors opened after 10:15. To his surprise, only the gym doors had opened in the 5 hours since then, and they'd only opened once. _Changeling's still in there!_ Robin realized, as he shut down the computer. _Better go check on him. Hope there wasn't a problem between him and Raven, they've been doing really well recently. _

The elevator lift was uneventful, but when Nightwing began walking down the hall to the gym he noticed something unusual. _That's not his normal music. _All three of the guys had their own workout playlist for solo training. Cyborg preferred old-school rock, Nightwing used House or dubstep, and Changeling typically preferred beatboxing tracks or Hollywood soundtracks like Gladiator or Transformers. This wasn't any of those things. Though the gym was supposedly soundproofed, Nightwing could pick up traces of heavy, guttural vocals accaccompanied by wailing guitars and powerful drum beats, heavy on the bass. Nightwing keyed the door half-open and slipped through quickly, shutting the door behind him. Immediately, he plugged his ears. _Changeling's got hearing at least three times as sensitive as mine, how is he not reeling from this volume? _

It was clear Changeling hadn't noticed him enter, as a green sasquatch held a barbell loaded with plates on its chest in a classic bench press. Suddenly, Changeling extended, tossing the weights out of his grip in front of him. The weights couldn't have been in the air for more than half a second before they came down, but when they did, a green gorilla caught them and brought them down immediately. Again, the weights were tossed up, and caught again by the sasquatch. Changeling settled into a rhythm, tossing the weights up, shifting, then catching them again, getting faster and faster as he did.

Nightwing took the chance to survey the disaster that was the gym around him. The heavy bag looked like it had gone through nine rounds with Cinderblock, then been ripped off its hinges and mauled by a pack of wolves. The speed bag had been ripped straight down the center from front to back. There was a pile of fur at the end of not one but two treadmills, likely because one had overheated. The squat rack's barbell had snapped at the middle from too much weight on either side.

_ Last time I saw the gym in this state was…. OH. _Nightwing reached for the volume knob on the stereo. "Last time I saw the gym like this was before your vacation" Nightwing called out as the gorilla racked the weights, alerted to his presence by the change in volume. "Anything you need to share?"

Changeling shifted back to his 21-year old self, wearing a white tank top and black shorts. _No shoes or gloves,_ Nightwing noted. "No."

"No?"

"No."

"Changeling, it's 3 AM. You've been in here for almost five hours, half destroyed the equipment, and the last time you did this you followed it up by asking me for six months of 'sabbathical.' Then, two days after I said no, the Doom Patrol sent an urgent request for your assistance, which took six months. " Changeling looked away. "You've been back for a year now, never had any issues, and suddenly this happens." Nightwing gestures to the rest of the room. "I don't want to lose you again; we missed you for those six months, but I need to know if whatever was the problem then is going to be a problem now. I need to know, Changeling, is the Doom Patrol going to call you again?"

Changeling shook his head, resolute. "No."

"No?"

"No."

_Alright, there's more than one way to get answers, if we're going to play the one-word game. _"Okay, then." Nightwing nodded. "Is this going to be a problem to the team?"

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"Is there anything we can do to help?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Does this have anything to do with Raven?"

"Yes. Wait, what?" Changeling paused as he realized what he said. Nightwing thought he heard the shapeshifter mutter "Damn bat-training."

"Changeling, you know you can talk to me..."

"I told you, my reasons were personal then and they're personal now."

"Even about personal issues." Nightwing completed. Years of leadership (and dating Starfire, to be honest) had helped the acrobat recognize that some problems needed more than a leader, they needed a friend. Sure, he obsessed over work from time to time, but he was getting better.

When all he got was a sigh, he continued. "Hell, if not me, talk to Cyborg. Or Star, even, she knows how to keep my secrets, and she knows Raven about as well as anybody…"

"It's not Raven, okay?" Changeling burst out, still not meeting Nightwing in the eye. "At least, not really. It's about me. About staying… Me."

"What do you mean?" Nightwing sat on the bench across his teammate.

Changeling sighed, resigning himself to the conversation. "Remember the Adonis thing?"

Now it was Nightwing's turn to look away. "I try not to. I made some pretty bad mistakes that evening, Garfield, and I'm sorry."

"Water under the bridge dude" Changeling dismissed it. "The problem is, what happened to Adonis and what happened to me were different."

"How?"

"I don't know about the technicals, but basically what that chemical did was bring together our primal urges into one form." Changeling stared at his hands as he continued, "For him that was aggressive, demanding, and targeted at Raven. It wanted to establish dominance, to have power over her, and was probably caught between killing her and worse."

Robin paled at the idea, at what Changeling was insinuating. "You mean?"

"Well, he wasn't exactly politely flirting with her before, and he was a hormonal teenager. Consolidate baser instincts like that and you get something pretty nasty." Now neither Titan could look at the other. "Fortunately, Cy's antidote worked, and now he's just a pipsqueak who makes big suits, and occasionally the Sunday paper."

"But that didn't happen to you," Nightwing concluded. "You protected her from him."

"Yeah, but that's kinda a weird story." Changeling qualified. "The chemical did basically the same thing it did to me as it did to him, bring together basic instincts and give them form. The difference is, it didn't just draw on my instincts, it took the instincts of the entire animal kingdom with it."

Nightwing's eyes shot up. "The entire animal kingdom? How?"

Changeling shrugged. "It's in their DNA. That means it's in mine. Anyway, the point is that among those instincts was the wolf-pack. Raven was part of my pack, and you defend your pack."

Nightwing nodded, pensive. "Okay, but you got the antidote, too. Didn't that take care of it?"

Changeling snorted. "Take care of what? Feeling the basic instincts of every animal that's ever existed every waking moment? I've been doing that since I turned green. Ever notice now alert I am late at night, or how I sleep more in the winter? Sound like nocturnal hunting patterns or hibernation tendencies to you?" Changeling chuckled without humor, shaking his head. "Winter is hell. Half of me wants to fly south, the other half wants to eat twice my body weight and sleep til May."

"Okay, so that form was driven by your animal, and human, instincts, especially the desire to protect her from him." Nightwing was putting the mental pieces together."But you haven't taken that shape ever since the serum, and your aggressive behavior returned to normal."

"Yeah, the antidote gave me control again, I guess, but that's not the point. The point is, I still have all that in me. I could still take become… that… again. You know, when I become an animal, I feel it's instincts like, a hundred times stronger than the rest of the time? I have to fight them back to keep control." Changeling paused to breathe. "I just, sometimes it all seems to rise up, and I have to run it out or I don't know what will happen to me."

Neither Titan spoke for a while.

"You know, if you'd told me all this back then, I would have let you go." Nightwing offered.

Changeling half-laughed. "I would have if I could have. I didn't understand it this well back then, I just knew that the animals were screaming, and I didn't know how to make them stop. I needed Mento, or to be out in the wild, or something, and I couldn't explain it. You'd think I was going crazy." Changeling chuckled. "Hell, I thought I was going crazy."

He ran his fingers through his hair. "But I figured it out, with a little help from the Doom Patrol, and I came back. And now, it has too."

The detective in Nightwing wouldn't let it go. "Why tonight?"

Changeling sighed. "Probably Overload. I saw him trying to kill Raven and those two civilians, and it brought back all my protective instincts all over again. Then I took God-knows-how-many Kilowatts through every cell in my body, must have put me on overdrive. It'll burn out, I've learned how to deal with it."

"And this helps?" Nightwing gestured to the gym.

"Yeah," Changeling looked around sheepishly. "Sorry about all that, I'll patch it up. Spares are in the basement, right?"

Nightwing nodded, satisfied with the response. "All right. Let me know if there's any way I can help. If you need another dose of the serum, an excuse to slip away from something to go work out like this, let me know and I'll try to be discrete."

"Really?" Changeling seemed surprised.

"Yeah. I know how therapeutic training can be, and I know what it's like to need some personal space around things you'd rather not discuss." Nightwing stood to leave. "Thank you for talking to me about this, I know it wasn't easy. Just promise me two things."

Changeling looked up at his team leader, nervous.

"First, if there's any chance this could affect the team or a mission, you let me know."

The animorph nodded slowly.

"And second, if there's any way I can help, you tell me that too."

Changeling nodded fully, relief in his eyes.

"All right then," Nightwing nodded, clapping Changeling on the shoulder as he headed towards the door. "I'll see you at 8:00 for combat training."

The only response he got was a groan as he slipped out the door. Halfway down the hall, Nightwing idly noted something. _Last time this happened was after a recon mission with Raven…._

* * *

Changeling listened for the hiss of the closing elevator door before he released a breath. It was never easy lying to the resident detective, especially after the one-word-answer stage. As he set out sweeping up the hair by the treadmill, he made a note to send Cliff- aka "robotman" a thank-you for his advice for dealing with Mento: "Always start with enough truth to establish your story. Then, figure out exactly what information you don't want to give, and see if you can find other, mostly honest information you can replace it with. If you absolutely have to, make something up, but never any more than what's strictly necessary."

_Well, I certainly cut it close on that one._ In fact, Changeling had lied very little. It was only once Robin questioned why the urges returned today that he'd had to get creative. _Sure, protecting the herd is a strong instinct, but it's not nearly strong enough to do this to me, or I'd never survive working in a team. _Changeling though. _Though the Overload bit should cover that for me, as long as I keep these "therapy sessions" to a minimum. _

There are millions of instincts inherent to the species Changeling could become… but none so strong as protecting one's mate.

_Stupid freaking mating call…_


	5. Aftermath-Raven, Part 1

Unbeknownst to Changeling and Nightwing, they were not the only ones awake in Titans Tower. After Changeling left, it had taken Raven a solid 45 minutes to rise from the floor. Add in an hour of cleaning (by hand, since she didn't trust her powers at the moment) to collect and dispose of the glass, pottery shards, and pillow fluff aggressively scattered throughout her room, and she didn't even light the first centering candle for meditation until Changeling had already destroyed the heavy bag. Had her teammates been there to witness her behavior they would surely have expressed concern. At best, it could be considered trance-like, at worst, she resembled a zombie. Eyes wide, lax jaw but close-lipped, she resembled nothing more than Cyborg the night they had discovered his robotic half could sleep-walk.

Changeling had burnt out the first treadmill before Raven had centered herself enough to begin in earnest. _Conference room, now. _She called her aspects all at once. _I will join you shortly. _She could feel her uneasiness at the idea, which trickled down to her doppelgangers. _It's been a long while since I called a conference like this_, she thought. _Almost a year and a half, now. _

She intended to join her nine components shortly, but she needed to do something first. The blackness around her faded away and she found herself where she had been not four hours before: Affection's territory. Rather than seeking out the embodiment herself, though, Raven made her way to a small grove with a meandering path. See, as the landscape of Raven's mind, Nevermore was more than a repository of Doppelgangers, it was a memory palace as well. Every experience Raven had was subconsciously organized here. All memories could be accessed a number of ways. Reason held them all, and kept them organized chronologically in her libraries.

But the memories were stored another way, as well. Every memory has an emotional quality, which put them in the care of their respective aspects. Brave, for example, kept statues of enemies defeated or obstacles overcome, and one could access the memories of brave times by touching these statues. (Happy cracked up over the statue of Starfire's pudding next to the statue of Mallah, but Brave asserted that both required equal measures of herself to overcome, and that if anything, the pudding should be closer to Trigon.) Happy kept pictures in scrapbooks, Timid buried hers in unmarked (but no less remembered) graves. But Raven wasn't here for any of their memories. She stepped into Affection's realm, getting her bearings before heading for a small forest in the distance. Like all her aspects, Affection stored memories. Hers hung from the trees in her garden.

_I remember when this place was just a single sapling_, Raven reflected, stooping under a branch to enter the grove. All around her were hundreds of objects, suspended seemingly at random from graceful, swooping branches of live oaks and weeping willows. Somewhere out of sight, a brook bubbled.

_It's funny how many of these have real-world counterparts_, Raven thought to herself. From only where she stood, she could see a set of earbuds Cyborg made for her two Christmases ago, the marionette puppet of herself that caused her to switch bodies with Starfire, and a waffle. If she reached out to touch any of these items she knew she could go back and revisit their embodied memories, but since none of them referenced memories she was looking for, she moved on deeper into the grove. She snorted and rolled her eyes when she saw a large plush chicken around the corner of a Camperdown elm, but headed in that direction. _If these are organized the way I think they are…._

And indeed they were. Just beyond the chicken were a series of objects clearly related to her green teammate. A joke book which seemed to get thicker by the second (coincidentally titled "Reader Beware"), a dog leash from their adventure with Soto, and a recipe for tofu-free vegetarian curry he'd given her after she called it "the best not-meat she ever tasted" each dangled from a thin strand from nearby branches.

Raven scanned the nearby branches until one item in particular caught her eye. _How?... _ Was all she could ask, as she reached for a white book with metal adorning on the corners. _How could anything with… Him… end up here?" _

* * *

And suddenly, Raven was in her room, putting this very book in a strongly warded trunk. There was a knock at her door.

"Raven, It's me." Beast Boy's voice lacked its usual energy. "I'm sorry.:

"For what? You're not the one that…"

"No, I'm sorry that… he broke your heart."

She didn't need empathic senses to feel how genuine he was being. "I know it was all a lie, but he was the only person who didn't make me feel like I was… creepy." She knew it was low to say it that way to the green changeling, but she couldn't find the words to put it any other way. "And don't try to tell me I'm not."

Then he surprised her. "Okay, fine. You're way creepy. But that doesn't mean you have to stay locked in your room." She paused. The truth rang through her, through all the insecurities, the fear, the hurt. "You think you're alone, but you're not."

She broke. It didn't look like it, but if she had opened her mouth she didn't know what would have poured forth, or what emotions would go with it. So she acted. Before she knew what she was doing, she keyed the door open, took two steps forward, and gave Beast Boy only the third hug she'd initiated in her life.

* * *

The memory phased out, and Raven found herself back in the grove, suddenly remembering why the stankball not only hung from a tree downwind, but was depicted on a trophy in Brave's cabinet.

Raven released the book_ No wonder that's here. That was the first time I saw that side of him. Even then he was thoughtful, pure-hearted, and somehow he knew exactly what to say. What I needed to hear. _

The next item to catch her eye was a series of letters, carved from stone. _BEASTMAN?_ She wondered, reaching out…

* * *

She stood on the rocks outside their home, Beast Boy down by the water with his back to her.

"So, he was the one who hurt you, right?" He asked without preface, or turning around. "Not me?"

_The Adonis incident,_ Raven realized. _He's not asking for himself. _She realized. _He wanted to make sure he didn't hurt ME. He's got Robin threatening him with expulsion or jail, he __just violated almost every one of his moral principles,_ _and he's genuinely concerned for my sake. "_He broke into the tower to attack you, and wound up attacking me too."

"Ugh. I can't believe I ate meat." He paused. "I acted like a real jerk, I'm sorry."

"You weren't yourself."_ And I can relate._

"Cyborg said the chemicals at the lab messed with my DNA. Unleashed something… Primal."

"And he gave you an antidote. You're better now"

"Yeah, but that Thing… that Beast… it came from inside me. And it's still there, I can feel it."

For a second, a split second, she considered telling him just how much she understood_._ Seriously considered it. "Good. If it wasn't for that Beast, I might not be here right now. Having that thing inside doesn't make you an animal. Knowing when to let it out is what makes you a man." The monks would be proud of her for that one.

"Hmm…" _How is it that he can actually express mischief in a single syllable? "_Maybe you should call me BeastMAN from now on…"

_Of course. _"We're having a moment here. Don't ruin it."

He settled back down. "Beastdude?"

She groaned, but she'd accomplished what she set out to do. Even were she not an empath, his body language spoke volumes. She was glad she could bring her friend-her genuine, playfully care-free friend- some comfort. _If anyone shouldn't need to worry about their darker side, it Beast Boy._

* * *

She shook her head as the memory resolved back to the Grove. _Where is it? _She searched the branches intently.

She needn't have bothered. Conveniently dangling over the path, within easy reach for any passers-by, was tarnished copper penny taped to a silver string. Walking up, she realized it was exactly at the height of her chakra gem, so on a whim she inclined her head forward to make contact.

* * *

It was the darkest day of her life. Everything, all the good she'd done, every person she'd saved, it was all about to be wiped away. There was nothing, and no one, who could stop Trigon.

Yet they tried anyway.

She hovered, meditating in a room with more wards than even she understood, anchored by technology she was pretty sure even Cyborg didn't understand completely. She'd tried to warn them, to convince them of Trigon's power, but they wouldn't listen. Robin had his plan, Cyborg had his tech, even Starfire had "boundless confidence and righteous fury" and the symbols inscribed on the walls from Raven's own books. Nothing gave her hope. As she "listened" to her teammate's emotions during the battle she could feel their exhaustion give way to elation, but they couldn't feel the darkness around them, replenishing Slade's ranks. Sure enough, their elation turned to discouragement, and she knew they were done for.

"For luck," He'd said as he ran out the door, leaving the penny in her grip.

_All the luck in the world won't help us now. _Her friends were out there, relying on feelings and plans and technology and luck… and they'd all run out. But when Raven closed her fist, the penny reminded her of something more than luck. It was the opposite of luck, it was the refusal to sit back and let whatever was going to happen, happen. It was that sheer, stupid, beautiful optimism that looked at a man who'd defeated them all single-handed even before becoming a demi-god and asking "you and what army?" And then fighting that army when it rose from the earth. It was Beast Boy. It was simple, it was naïve, it was even downright stupid, and it made absolutely no difference in the end.

Except it made all the difference.

Raven's eye's popped open. _That might actually work. _She rose to her feet and quickly made her way from the safe room. _It will take everything. Every ounce I have, and every resource we can muster, and even that probably won't be enough. _But that penny said she had to try. _And if it's not enough, there's always luck. _


	6. Aftermath- Raven, Part 2

I'll keep this simple: I don't own Teen Titans, and when I started this section of the story, I had no idea it would stretch on this long. Sorry to all my changeling fans, I promise I'll get back out of Raven's head as soon as the Muse will let me.

* * *

Previously, in Raven's Memories:

It was the darkest day of her life. Everything, all the good she'd done, every person she'd saved, it was all about to be wiped away. There was nothing, and no one, who could stop Trigon.

Yet they tried anyway.

She hovered, meditating in a room with more wards than even she understood, anchored by technology she was pretty sure even Cyborg didn't understand completely. She'd tried to warn them, to convince them of Trigon's power, but they wouldn't listen. Robin had his plan, Cyborg had his tech, even Starfire had "boundless confidence and righteous fury" and the symbols inscribed on the walls from Raven's own books. Nothing gave her hope. As she "listened" to her teammate's emotions during the battle she could feel their exhaustion give way to elation, but they couldn't feel the darkness around them, replenishing Slade's ranks. Sure enough, their elation turned to discouragement, and she knew they were done for.

"For luck," He'd said as he ran out the door, leaving the penny in her grip.

_All the luck in the world won't help us now. _Her friends were out there, relying on feelings and plans and technology and luck… and they'd all run out. But when Raven closed her fist, the penny reminded her of something more than luck. It was the opposite of luck, it was the refusal to sit back and let whatever was going to happen, happen. It was that sheer, stupid, beautiful optimism that looked at a man who'd defeated them all single-handed even before becoming a demi-god and asking "you and what army?" And then fighting that army when it rose from the earth. It was Beast Boy. It was simple, it was naïve, it was even downright stupid, and it made absolutely no difference in the end.

Except it made all the difference.

Raven's eye's popped open. _That might actually work. _She rose to her feet and quickly made her way from the safe room. _It will take everything. Every ounce I have, and every resource we can muster, and even that probably won't be enough. _But that penny said she had to try. _And if it's not enough, there's always luck. _

* * *

Raven stepped back and the memory dissolved around her. _I had forgotten. With Trigon and the age transformation and all the stuff with Robin, I had forgotten about that penny. _

"That's a good one, isn't it?" a voice- her own voice- called out gently behind her.

Raven turned to see Affection standing at the entrance to the grove. "It's been there for a long time, hasn't it?"

"What, the penny?"

"No, the… you." Raven indicated to her violet-clad counterpart.

"Yeah, well, kinda." Affection ventured a little closer. "I started out small, you know. Affection always does... with everyone, not just you. Lightning doesn't just crash from the sky and suddenly you're all woozy about someone…" Affection paused to indicate a bench where they could both sit. "I mean, don't get me wrong, Anger's got a series of lava pools with his name on 'em, I think sometimes they all overflow and form a small ocean." She paused to gaze at the collection around her. "But yeah, I've been around for a while."

The blue and violet rested together on the stone seat, watching light glint off the various objects as they drifted in the breeze. "I mean, I started out as gratitude. You fought together, that tends to establish a bond. But I started out that way with everyone, and now I wear different hats with everybody on the team. You already saw the penny, the thing with… he-who-will-not-be-named, and the Beast thing, so you've got some indication of the bigger picture: he cares for us, Raven, and like it or not that makes you feel."

Raven nodded, truth sinking in.

The two sat together in silence for a minute.

Without preamble, Affection stood up. "Come on, there's one more you probably ought to see before we head to congress."

Curious, Raven followed her towards the back half of the grove. Affection stopped by a long line of trees with only a few objects, far fewer than anywhere else Raven had seen. Just beyond this row the clustering of memories returned, thicker than ever. "What's this place?"

"It's a time period" Affection replied. "I don't normally organize stuff like this, but you didn't leave me much of a choice. See, this row" she gestured to the bare branches "is from about a year and a half ago, up until this point…" she reached around to pull a large object from the backside of a tree to retrieve…

"Changeling's uniform?" Sure enough, there was no mistaking the red and white pattern which had replaced the familiar purple when…

"No." Raven blinked when it the pieces came together.

"Yeah, pretty crazy, right?" Affection held the uniform up and stared at it. "That-" she pointed to the empty patch "Is from when Garfield was on his mission with the Doom Patrol. When he came back, he was wearing this."

"No…" Raven repeated, staring between the branches, sounding less sure. Sure enough, all of the items in this section of the grove were related to one of three people- Starfire, Cyborg, or Robin, in that order.

"Yeah, those six months were hell. I mean, Knowledge was content; her libraries grew tenfold during that time from all the reading you got in. Anger was more active, too, seemed like she was only a hair-trigger away, and don't get me started on Apathy. She would have thrown a party, if she could have convinced someone else to do it for her. Her territory grew so big, I honestly didn't know where it ended." Affection paused, eyes downcast. "They've all got their memories from that time in abundance. Happy, Brave, and me got almost nothing."

She seemed to get a second wind at that. "I mean, don't get me wrong, you weren't the only one affected. Empathy says the moods around the tower shifted something fierce. You realize Nightwing and Star spent four of those six months either not talking to each other, yelling, or broken up? Cyborg actually lost weight, and it had nothing to do with tech upgrades."

Affection ran her hand over the fabric of Changeling's uniform. "And then this. He left looking exactly the way he did when we met him, hadn't aged a day, and still wore that purple ensemble. Then he shows up with this new red suit, new name, new body…." She paused, distracted in her reflection, "but with that some goofy, glowing smile." Affections eyes softened and she smiled sweetly. "That was the first time, you know?"

"First time for what?" Raven had been content to sit through Affection's soliloquy, but she didn't particularly like not knowing where this conversation was going.

"First time you felt a little of what you felt three hours ago." Raven just blinked. "When I won the bet."

"Now wait a minute, that wasn't…"

"Oh, give it UP already!" Affection was exasperated and indignant. "Two lightbulbs, a vase, and four pillows don't just blow up by themselves."

"You did that…"

"I'm AM you!" That brought Raven up short. "Seriously, do you think knowledge can learn stuff without you? Or I can feel something you don't?" She scoffed. "We feel what you feel not because we make you feel something, but because you feel it, and we help you process it. Help you categorize and control. It's always been that way." Raven knew she spoke the truth.

"I am Affection. I am what you feel during your garage-time chats with Cyborg, or when Starfire braids your hair. Very different sides of me, sure, but me all the same. And as you change and grow, so do I." Affection's dramatic gesturing settled, and she refocused on the uniform in her hand. "This is an excellent example. Come with me, and I'll show you what I mean."

Raven nodded warily and stretched out to the red-and-white suit…

* * *

_ Cinderblock is in a particularly foul mood today,_ Raven thought as she surveyed the battlefield through the smoke. _Of course, the environment doesn't help. _Cinderblock had made his appearance in a small oil field outside Jump City, an area with plenty of explosive potential that effected the Titans, but not the stone golem. The workers had long since cleared out, but Cinderblock seemed irrationally intent on destroying every oil pump in sight, and the Titans were having a hard time stopping him.

"Raven, get those fires put out," Nightwing called from behind a cloud of smoke. "Star can't hit what she can't see."

So far, the plan was simple: Nighwing and Cyborg keep Cinderblock distracted and busy while Starfire aimed for a knockout blow with her flight and enhanced strength. The problem was that Cinderblock had seen this technique recently, and even Cinderblock could figure out that Star's turning wasn't sharp enough to avoid being swatted from the sky by a massive concrete palm.

_ She's tiring_ Raven realized, as she directed her attentions to the flames from a damaged derrick. _She's not moving as fast as…_

"Raven, look out!"

Raven turned, alerted by Nightwing's call, but it was too late. She could barely recognize the metal object flying at her from the smoke cloud. She might have caught it with energy, or dodged, but her energies were focused on the fire, and it was moving too quickly. She braced for impact…

And felt a collision… from her left? Raven opened her eyes to see pair of strikingly bright green ones staring back at her… green eyes. On a green face. With pointed green ears. And an easy, goofy grin that accented a large canine tooth….

"You know Rae, you really should wear a hard hat around machinery like this."

Well, that sealed it. "Beast Boy?"

"Actually, it's Changeling now" he interrupted her. "I got a new suit to go with the name change, see?"

Raven glanced down instinctively. Sure enough, the familiar purple and black were gone, a sporty red and white in their place. _That's not the only thing new,_ Raven noted as she scanned. _He fills this suit out a lot better than his old one. _A warm flush rose to her face, and she suddenly became glad she fought with her hood up.

"Uh, Rae?" Changeling inquired. "You good? Cuz, there's still a fight going on."

Raven suddenly realized that she wasn't standing, floating, or in any of her usual positions. No, she was being held, bridal style, in her prodigal friend's arms as he stood on solid ground. She was fairly certain she'd never flushed this deeply before. "Of course." She levitated upright.

"Anytime. Hey, you think you can get Robin to back off Cinderblock for a second? I got something I want to try."

Raven realized they were on the far side of the smoke from the rest of the Titans. _If they didn't see him catch me they probably don't know he's back yet. _She nodded and reached for her communicator. "Nightwing, Tell Starfire and Cyborg to back off for a second."

"Raven, you okay? You got a plan?"

"I'm fine. And yes, something like that."

She could hear Nightwing shout to her teammates.

"Nightwing, huh? Guess I'm not the only one who needed a change," Beast bo- Changeling grinned . "Now watch this…" He shifted into some kind of bird, likely a peregrine falcon, and took off.

_ Oh boy… _ Raven let the fire burn and followed to get a better view of Cinderblock. She wasn't sure what to expect- with the green shapeshifter nothing was predictable- but she knew she'd want to watch. _If only to be there to heal him…_

Cinderblock stood in a small clearing, a wrecked oil pump at his feet, fires burning on two sides. He waved his arms wildly, defending against Starfire's next attack.

"Hey, Big Dumb and Ugly," A voice called from the smoke cloud between the two fires. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

Suddenly, the smoke swelled, and the outline of a Tyrannosaurus roared at the stone giant. Cinderblock blinked in surprise but recovered quickly, answered with a roar of his own, and began running towards his challenger. The dinosaur disappeared, and a large green cat- likely a cheetah or leopard- bounded from the smoke cloud, running straight at the goliath in return.

Raven could only stare in dread at the inevitable collision. _Someone of his own size intelligence, maybe. What in Azar's name is he thinking?_

The two combatants had reached top speed and were entering striking range. Cinderblock raised a fist to pound the green animal into paste, when time seemed to slow down…

Five things happened in quick succession. First, the leopard leaped up at Cinderblock, flipping backwards in the process.

Second, the leopard reverted to Changeling's new human form. He was curled backwards in a full circle, head touching his feet, and with his head upside-down (which meant facing her) Raven could have sworn she saw a joyful grin on his face. The extreme stretch accented his new height and musculature nicely….

Then, less than a split second after the first transformation, Changeling grew into an Ankylosaur, a club-tailed dinosaur with heavy armor. The reason for his backspin became immediately evident as the centrifugal force whirled a heavy, clubbed tail into Cinderblock's unprotected jaw, lifting the giant from the ground and throwing him back with the force of the uppercut.

Fourth, the Ankylosaur disappeared, likely into a form too small to observe from the distance between Raven and the fight. Cinderblock was horizontal now, at the apex of his flight, inevitably set to fall on his back…

And finally, Cinderblock's eye's widened in despair as directly above him appeared a "small" sperm whale. Both stone and sea creature fell in tandem, and half a second after Cinderblock thudded on the dirt the whale crashed down on him with a collision like thunder.

When the shockwave dissipated and Titans opened their eyes, Changeling was reclined on an unconscious Cinderblock's chest, looking for all the world like he was sunbathing, contently grinning as he listened to the screaming missile that was a hug-bound Starfire racing towards him.

_ Azar,_ thought Raven, as an unusual warmth settling in her stomach. _It's good to have Garfield back._

* * *

The memory dissipated, leaving Raven standing face-to-face with Affection.

"And that was the day," Affection held a small, innocent smile and a far-off gaze. "The day I got a new facet for Garfield…" Raven's eyes bulged as Affection spread her arms, parting her cloak. "Lust."

Raven took two steps back, stumbling over her own feet. "Conference room. Now," she croaked out, fleeing through a black portal.

Affection's sweet innocence melted away, and she grinned with satisfaction. She allowed her cloak to cover her again as she walked back across the stretch of empty branches, plucking a small object from the tree just before them. Still grinning predatorily, she sank through the ground. "Always nice talking to you, Raven."

* * *

A/N: Alright! Sorry about the last chapter my dear readers, I know there wasn't a lot of development there. I only intended it as a setup for this chapter, just as this chapter was meant to set up the next, and it was all meant to be one big chapter but it got too big for me to wait to publish. Anyway, what do you guys think about Affection? I toned down the devious factor on this one a little, lined her up with the memories Raven's been visiting, but I think we'll see her get more aggressive soon. Gosh, these Nevermore chapters are difficult to write...


	7. Aftermath- Raven, Part 3

A/N: Hello all! Thank you so much to my reviewers, seriously, your feedback is the fuel that keeps me writing!

Well, here it is, the hardest chapter yet! This chapter is the reason I don't normally like Nevermore, there are so many "characters" that it's hard to write them all with balance and structure. That being said, I'm quite proud of how this turned out, so without further ado I present… Nevermore- the Conclusion.

P.S. If you thought I owned anything related to the Teen Titans, I don't. Not even a dvd set…

* * *

When Starfire had first asked Raven for guidance while meditating, Raven had emphasized the importance of clearing your mind of all distractions and active thought. The goal was to achieve complete silence and stillness-finding one's center- which opened up oneself to explore deeper into their own psyche, to allow the subconscious to emerge and speak.

For Raven, however, things were slightly more complicated by the fact that her subconscious had nine voices. True, she could always travel through Nevermore, speaking with each of her aspects in turn, but this wouldn't allow her to see the bigger picture. One can only truly understand the workings of a compartmentalized subconscious by putting all the pieces together in one place and allowing them to interact.

Most people would call this their "center." Raven called it her conference room.

It resembled such a space, at least, if you weren't picky about the "room" part. There were neither walls nor floor or ceiling to this space, merely objects floating in a seemingly limitless black plain. The fixtures of a conference room remained, at least. A long oak table had a slight curve to the long sides, giving it a slight oval effect. The table was ringed by ten chairs, four on each side and one at each end, with no particular designation that any chair belonged to any particular person. Nonetheless, there was a particular pattern which the users followed meticulously. Raven sat at the head of the table, with Empathy, Joy, Bravery, and Affection on her left, in that order. Across the table sat Reason, and to her left sat Anger, Fear, Sadness, and Apathy, such that Apathy sat at Raven's right.

Right now, two chairs sat empty, attesting to Raven and Affection's absence. A projector screen hovered behind Reason's chair, the picture obscured by a large "paused" icon.

Suddenly, a black portal opened, and Raven stepped through directly beside her own chair. Her face was flushed, and her breathing was ragged.

"Raven!" Happy cried, literally bounding from her chair in pursuit of a hug. Having previously been occupied by spinning in her chair, however, her aim was off, and she landed in the center of the table.

"Typical." Anger scoffed. "You always make us look foolish."

Happy just stuck her tongue out in return, playful as ever.

"Greetings, Raven," Knowledge overrode the banter, "we were just going through the video. You're right on time."

"Thank you," Raven replied as she and Happy sat. "Please, continue."

Empathy spoke up. "Don't we want to wait for..?"

"She'll be here shortly," Raven cut her off. She nodded towards the screen, and all eyes turned to the monitor.

_ Changeling picked up mid-speech. "I'll get Cy to the infirmary; we'll put some aloe or something on it, don't wanna risk infection or something…" He turned, and Raven called grabbed his wrist. _

"Pause." Raven called out, and the screen froze. "I didn't do this on my own. Reason will confirm that I didn't process the thought of actually grabbing Changeling's wrist until it was already done, which means this act was somebody's influence." The various emoticlones looked amongst each other.

"I did it" Brave volunteered. "He was about to leave, and it seemed like the best way to stop him." Raven nodded, this was basically what she expected. "But I only did it because she asked me to."

That took Raven by surprise. "Who did?"

"Me." A voice called out, and Affection rose from below the table level behind her chair. "He was being sweet, and I didn't want to be harsh with him, so I asked Brave to break protocol a little…" Affection's devious streak seemed to have recessed, and she spoke with candor that reflected the standing protocol while in the conference room: speak your peace and be heard.

"Okay." Raven seemed wary, but accepted Affection's logic. All of her Aspects were prone to action based on temporary conditions, and the idea that Affection had called on Bravery to prompt the move made sense. "Anyone else involved?"

Everyone else shook their heads, especially Reason and Fear, who had been particularly caught off guard by the move. "What about responses? Who spiked?" Raven inquired.

Empathy and Happy raised their hands, and Happy had a dreamy look in her eyes.

"Happy?"

"I didn't want him to leave!" Happy exclaimed.

_ Short, sweet, and simple, _Raven thought. Happy was like that most of the time. Raven nodded towards Empathy. "And you?"

"I always get excited with physical contact," Empathy shrugged. "We feel closer to people, and our Empathic senses get stronger towards them."

Raven nodded and directed her gaze to Fear. "Why didn't you spike?"

"To be honest, it happened too quickly," Fear (often known as Timid) shook her head quickly. "And Brave was overriding me; there wasn't room for me in the moment."

Reason cut in. "Affection and Happy were blocking out Anger and Sadness, as well. Not that there was much to prompt either of them at the time."

The embodiment of sorrow chimed in, "Yeah, I was upset we'd lashed out at him, but once Changeling accepted our apology I was satisfied."

Raven processed everything for a moment. "Okay," she braced herself. "Continue."

"_That's really not necessary, and you know it. I'll heal myself just fine, I just need to meditate." _

_ "Oh yeah, right." Changeling started turning back. "Still though, Cy will want to make sure…"_

_ In a moment of inspiration, Raven found herself wrapping her arms around Changeling, her cheek pressed against the top of his firm chest…_

"Pause."

An audible groan rose from Affection, which gave Anger a target. "You!" Anger accused, pointing at the violet cloaked doppelganger, "You put us in a position we were entirely unprepared for! You almost made us look like an idiot!"

"Hey, don't just blame me!" Affection defended. "They all had a say in it, too!" She pointed at Brave, Empathy, Happy, and _Reason?_

"Reason?" Raven enquired, surprised by the revelation.

"Well, perhaps a "say" in the matter is too strong a term..." Reason hedged. "I will admit, however, that I had the idea for the action, and, well, I was curious…"

"That was your idea?" Raven couldn't quite process the idea that her stoic self might have…

"Well, I suppose it was Affection who gave me the idea, what with your little chat beforehand and all," Reason continued, "but in the moment I thought about your bet, and how I had suggested apologizing to Garfield for lashing out, and how informative the experience might be… In any case, I may have provided the initial suggestion for the activity"

"And of course, with Garfield being so sweet and all, having just apologized…" Affection added.

"And the tea!" Happy cut in.

"And having saved us… again…" Affection included.

"And his concern about the burn!" Happy was bouncing in her chair.

"I just wanted to make him feel better," Empathy chimed in, which brought everyone to a halt. "He was still feeling guilty for his part in the misunderstanding, and concerned about our injury, and I wanted him to know we were grateful," she elaborated. "Like with the Beast incident you revisited earlier, he needed some comfort, and I- that is we- wanted to give it to him."

Raven motioned for everyone to be silent. "So all that built up in the moment, and Brave stepped in to make it happen?"

Brave nodded, unashamed.

Raven took a deep breath. "Alright then… Who spiked first?"

Instantly, every hand at the table, minus Ravens, pointed at Affection, who was beaming with pride.

"But I was close!" Happy chimed in.

"Affection?" Raven inquired warily.

"Oh, it was glorious," Affection whispered, her eyes glassy as she stared into the distance. "Finally thanking Gar for everything. For caring, for protecting us, for coming to draw us out…" She licked her lips. "And then the vindication that came from the swell! The feeling of his heartbeat, his smell, the strength of his torso, how we fit into his contour…" Affection grinned wildly. "I've never… we've never felt that all so strongly before." She seemed to come out of her reverie. "I peaked."

_ I might need to find a new phrase for that,_ Raven noted, as she fought to keep a stoic face. Affection's attire in the Grove flashed through her mind, and she blushed to think of the combination of that attire and the sensations Affection was remembering. _My sensations…._

"And that was when the power discharge destroyed the lamps" Reason supplied, factual as ever.

Raven paused at that. "Not the vase or pillows?"

"No," Fear spoke up. "That was me." All heads turned to the grey Raven-ite. "I mean, we were there and he was frozen and I thought 'what if he didn't want this?' and there were all these new feelings and I didn't want to look suspicious and we didn't have an explanation ready and there was energy going off on accident and I didn't know what was going ON!" She stopped to breathe, panting from the flooding of expression. "Brave was trying to hold me back, but you got scared and I got strong, so I shut down Affection and Happy and grabbed Reason and Apathy and we rode out the rest of the conversation."

Raven nodded. Fear was often the source of accidental power surges, and her story made sense with the rest of the memory. "And then Reason and I came up with the story about the girls and passing along the hug."

Reason nodded. "With some help from empathy, of course."

Empathy spoke up at that. "I borrowed a little bit of Bravery's assistance with the last part, as well. Gar needed something to bring him back around, and he deserved some honesty." She glanced at Affection. "We were grateful for his help and gestures, and he deserved to know as much."

Raven nodded. "Anger? You've been unusually quiet, anything to add?"

"Yeah, we're pissed at all of you," Anger's words were directed at the collection of aspects around her. "This was the worst string of unplanned emotional impulses in months, maybe years, and not only did we blow up stuff in our own room, and we nearly embarrassed ourselves in front of Changeling!" Anger cooled until her narrowed gaze rested on Affection. "And you… Everything was fine until you started mixing things up. Now we've got impulse moves, Fear spikes, and you want to start talking about physical intimacy?"

"Enough, Anger, you've said your piece," Raven chastised. It did not escape her that all these points were internal, meaning Raven was angry at herself, mostly for lack of control and the risks associated.

Reason cleared her throat. "So, Raven, it appears the facts have been laid out." She indicated the assembly. "We know what happened and why. Long story short, Affection has a new facet, one which desires a deeper relationship with Changeling, and this evening, that hug, confirmed it." She paused, looking across the length of the table directly at Raven. "The question is this: what do we plan to do about it?"

All eyes were on Raven at this point.

"I don't know."

The Aspects began to glance at each other around the room. This was unprecedented; Raven always knew what she wanted. Normally it was just a matter of telling one emotion to settle down, so why wasn't Raven doing that to Affection?

Raven sighed. "What does each of you say on the matter?"

As usual with a round-table question like this, Empathy responded first. "I say pursue a relationship, if he desires one in return, in whatever form that takes."

_ Typical, _Raven mused, _by definition, focused on the feelings of others. _

Apathy spoke up next. "I don't care what he wants; a relationship would be too much work and emotional investment."

_ Also typical. _Raven tended to favor the advice of her Empathy as a rule, though this one made her nervous.

Affection spoke up next. "You know my vote. I want everything to do with Garfield, you do too, you just don't feel it as strongly yet. I say we grab him and drag him to the nearest movie theatre, and forget about the movie."

Brave high-fived Affection for that one. "I'm with her, and I know Happy is too."

Happy was busy picking petals off a flower at the moment, muttering rhythmically under her breath, but she nodded excitedly nonetheless…

"NO!" screamed Fear, causing happy to drop her flowers, and the rest of the Aspects to turn in shock. "Don't any of you realize what they're saying? We could lose EVERYTHING! Our friend, the team, everything we've gotten used to over the years! We're in a good place now, and you want to risk that over a crush? What if he doesn't think about us that way, huh? Has he given us any indication that he wants something more? Well?!" Fear was looking at Reason now.

Reason pushed her glasses up as she considered her response. "Characteristic flirting aside, Changeling does show concern for our well-being, physically and emotionally…" Reason began, before discouragement showed on her face. "But I'm afraid neither Empathic senses nor any stretch of logic give us any indication that Changeling desires a romantic relationship with us. I suspect that we are too different to be compatible and too aloof to be desirable, and if his brief relationship with Terra is any indication, we aren't his 'type'. We've given him no reason to be interested in us. He has frequently been the butt of our jokes, we've discouraged his every attempt at humor, and we've sent him into the bay, window, or ceiling more times than even I can count."

"Exactly!" Fear was in full swing. "I say we forget about it. If we haven't felt anything from him, there's no way he's interested, and we can't take that risk!"

Sorrow spoke up, so quietly it was almost missed. "We can't take another Malchior."

The whole table froze.

She continued, "Especially not if it's him. Who will be there for us then?"

Affection tried. "Garfield would never…"

Fear was hysterical, "But what if he does?"

"Enough." Anger cut her off. "The green stain's brought me out a million times, and while I enjoy the exercise, we all know it's not healthy. I say pound him for even bringing up this mess and move on."

The table fell silent, the matter seemingly closed. It was five against four, and when both Fear and Reason stood together, you know the matter was settled.

Affection had other plans. "Reason, you said there was no indication Garfield felt the same way?"

"None that I can identify."

"But if I could provide some, would the matter stay open?"

"Perhaps…"

"Then I have a memory to present." Affection pulled a small digital recorder, the kind reporters use, from her cloak.

Raven and Reason exchanged a look. "Very well," Reason summoned the recorder to herself and turned her chair to face the screen. "When is this memory from?"

"Eighteen months and 12 days ago," Affection supplied. "Our last mission before the Doom Patrol called Beast Boy to Cambodia."

Murmurs swirled around the table as the video switched over to a forest scene and began to play.

* * *

Raven always hated forest missions. Give her a villain in the concrete confines of Jump City, or even the suburban sprawl around it, but forest missions meant hours spent weaving through trees, catching her cloak on branches, and dealing with the dirt and debris getting caught in her hood. The forest itself was fine, actually, under the right conditions the solitude and peace of a tranquil woods was refreshing, but missions in the forest were another story. Especially at night.

Yet here she was, floating a few inches off the ground because the canopy wouldn't let her go any higher, stretching her empathic senses as far as they would go without losing track of her immediate surroundings. Unfortunately, not everyone shared her distaste for nighttime forest activities. _Why hunters are even out here at this time of night is beyond me, _Raven complained to herself. _And who cares about some abnormally large paw prints, anyway? _ Indeed, Raven and Beast Boy were out here searching for something, something which had local hunters spooked. Bigfoot enthusiasts aside, plenty of respectable woodsmen had reported unfamiliar prints of a large, possibly canine, animal, and the Titans had decided it was worth looking into.

"Genetic modification or mutation has been known to produce some dangerous creatures before," Robin had argued, as he sent two of the Team out to the forested mountains east of town. "You two are best suited to rapid tracking." The boy wonder had come out once himself, looking for tracks or a trail, but given the search area and the paw prints ability to disappear as soon as they were reported, there wasn't much he could do.

So now Beast Boy was out sniffing trees or something while Raven drifted, reaching out to try and find any usual clamors or senses in the animal kingdom that might lead her to their mystery animal.

Raven was so distracted with the practice that she failed to notice a small tripwire suspended between two trees, a foot off the ground. Failed to notice, that is, until she drifted into it.

Time slowed down as Raven recognized what she had just done. It was too late to stop moving, she could hear machinery click behind her, the early stages of a sound she had heard before…

Raven turned and threw up a shield immediately, but as her eyes widened in dawning comprehension, she knew it was wouldn't be enough.

The shield was halfway formed when the shotgun went off.

Raven was on the edge of its spread pattern, and her shield protected her face and most of her chest, so for a moment as she watched buckshot bounce off her energy she thought she had escaped unharmed… and then she looked down. Each of her legs sported three, maybe four holes, already seeping blood, and when she put her hand to her abdomen, it came back crimson.

Then the pain hit.

Raven crashed to the forest floor, knowing she had only a few moments of consciousness to work with. She drew her communicator from her belt, keying for an emergency channel. "Beast Boy," she gasped, "I'm hit." It was all she could do, and her communicator rolled as her arm dropped.

As the darkness pressed in on her vision, the last thing Raven heard was a wild howl of a lone wolf…

* * *

The video ended, and the Aspects returned their attention to each other, none finding what to say.

Affection spoke up. "Cyborg says we were at the infirmary less than eight minutes after we made that call. We were at least 30 miles away from the tower, and somehow Garfield got our message, found us, and got us to the infirmary in seven minutes." She paused to stare at Reason. "Now tell me, what animal could carry us that far, that fast?"

"None," Raven cut in. "He must have used the T-ship."

Reason shook her head. "No, the jet takes two minutes to warm up, and was still at the Tower. But there isn't an animal in the world that could traverse that distance that quickly…" Her eyes widened in realization. "Unless, Garfield accessed the Beast."

The other emoticlones sat back at the notion. "Changeling never uses the Beast," Anger took up the argument. "He hasn't since…"

"Since our life was in danger from Adonis" Brave whispered.

The table fell silent again. "Okay," Reason conceded, "let's say that is the case. Beast Boy accessed the Beast again to save us a year and a half ago, and that that establishes a pattern." She paused. "I don't see what that has to do with…"

"Actually, that wasn't my point, Affection shrugged, "but it is interesting. No, my point is this." She rewound the scene with a gesture, but only about five seconds. "Listen." She let the video play.

A howl reverberated around the table.

"So?" Anger snapped, frustrated at Affection's obscure point. "What of it, a wolf howled."

"Now listen to this," Affection gestured behind her, where a new screen rose into place. Raven recognized the fight with Overload on it.

"…_Desheerey." Raven called out. A second later, a howl reverberated through the park._

"You hear it?" Affection called out. "Listen to them again." She played both howls from the two screens at the same time.

"They're identical," Reason observed, blinking at the revelation.

"And if the howl we heard eighteen months ago is the same as the one Changeling himself confirmed as a mating call…"

"Then we heard a mating call that night." Raven concluded, exasperated by the conversation. "So what, it was just a wolf."

Affection grinned like Robin preparing to checkmate Cyborg, but it was Reason who answered, "Wolves are not indigenous to this area of the country."

That brought Raven up short.

Affection's voice held confidence. "And what else is capable of generating a wolf mating call, hmm?"

Fear caught on. "You're not suggesting…"

Happy was next, "He wants us!"

Reason shut her down. "No Happy, we don't know that." She took a deep breath. "There may be a difference in the howls we cannot hear, one only distinguishable to wolves or other 'native speakers.' The context would certainly incline itself more towards a mourning or angry howl. There's also no proof that Beast Boy is the source of this howl." She paused, calculating her response. "What this does, however, is raise some interesting questions. If this howl is legitimately an expression of sexual desire, and from Garfield, then is it still valid?"

For that, everyone looked to Empathy. "I don't know," Empathy was indignant. "I can normally read Changeling clear as day, and I certainly haven't noticed anything in the past year or so." Raven nodded, satisfied, but Empathy continued. "I mean, there were definitely flashes of arousal for the three months or so before his Doom Patrol mission, but I haven't noticed any since."

"Wait, WHAT?" Raven cut in.

"Oh yeah, you don't remember that?" Empathy was nonchalant. "They were just little things, every now and then, so you dismissed them as his hormones."

"I remember that," Anger chipped in. "Caught him staring at her chest once over breakfast, sent him into the bay."

Affection chuckled. "He never did have the most discretion."

"This still doesn't change anything!" Fear cut into the conversation frantically. "His feelings have obviously moved on, he was a hormonal teenager, and we can't tell him we noticed that!" She looked around the table frantically. "This doesn't change anything, there's too much to risk!"

"Enough" Raven commanded, and all the aspects turned to her. "You've all said your piece. Reason, Affection has attempted to claim that Garfield once desired something more than friendship, exactly what is uncertain." She took a breath, bracing herself. "After this, where do you stand?"

Reason paused to think. "It's long been obvious that Garfield cares for us, despite our many flaws. We cannot determine exactly how far this affection extends, or what forms it takes, except for the obscure possibility that it was once physical. Essentially, I'm operating with either insufficient, circumstantial, or outdated information, so I cannot advise you here. That being said, I don't see enough data to act one way or another."

"That's fine," Affection surprised them all by speaking up. She turned to face Raven. "I'm not saying we need to go out there and profess undying love. Hell, I'm not even saying we should ask him out. We've made great progress in the past six hours, you barely recognized half of me before, but you've seen all of me now, and rather than deny you came to my domain, looked at the evidence yourself, then called us all here to process." She paused to gesture around the table. "I just want to be recognized, the same thing as any of your aspects here. That's what you want too, is the peace that comes from understanding yourself. Please, just allow yourself to feel me, like you learned to do with Fear so many years ago."

Raven's eyes softened, then closed as she deliberated. "Fine." The nine aspects listened intently. "I will attempt to accept this to the best of my abilities. However, Reason and Fear make valid points; I cannot and will not act until I have more information. I need to explore this new revelation in daily life, and determine which avenues are available should I choose to take one." She looked around the table, confirming what she expected; agreement from all parties, if begrudging from Fear and Apathy.

"Then if there is nothing else, I need sleep. And possibly a shower," Raven concluded, nodding to the assembly. "Thank you all for your assistance." And with that, Raven dissolved into thin air, emerging from her trance in her room.

As the emoticlones dismissed, each teleporting back to their respective realms, Brave leaned over to Affection.

"So, why'd you back off?" She inquired.

Affection's eyes glinted as she smiled. "I was never going to get around Fear and Reason, not as things stand now. I'm too young, not strong enough, especially my newer facets." Brave nodded, it had taken her a long time to grow and overcome Fear frequently herself.

Affection continued, "But all I need is to be felt. With time, and the right stimuli, I will grow. I know Garfield feels the same way, I don't care was Empathy says, and when you and I can get Reason either on our side or overpowered, Raven will have no choice but to embrace me in both action and feeling." Both emotions smiled at the thought.

"In the meantime, though," Affection's grin grew mischievous. "Raven has accepted me, which means she'll start feeling me more often…" Brave followed her eyes until they landed on a pink Raven doing loops in the air while making airplane noises. Affection gave a soft chuckle. "Raven's a smart girl with an imaginative Happy side and pent up Affection for a _very_ attractive young man," Affection explained. "What's that sound like to you?"

Brave tilted her head. "Sounds like a recipe."

Affection's eye's gleamed. "A recipe, yes. The perfect recipe for a _delicious _fantasy."


	8. Training, Part 1

A/N: All right, I'll keep this brief: Thank you, all my lovely reviewers, many of you either have or will be recieving a personal message from me soon, but in the meantime, here's another chapter for your reading pleasure. Also, I own nothing even slightly related to the Teen Titans or the characters depicted. Though I'm considering getting a green snake named Garfield, so I might own that eventually...

* * *

Raven was exhausted. The battle with Overload and the emotional sorting she'd just gone through left her physically and emotionally drained, so when emerged from a portal back into her room it was all she could do to discard her cloak before she crashed onto the bed. _It's four o'clock_, she noticed as she pulled the sheets over herself. _Training's in four hours… _Wincing at the idea,she fell quickly into deep sleep.

* * *

At precisely 7:55 AM, Raven was awoken by flashing lights. Sitting up with a start, she summoned her cloak to herself and prepared to teleport to the main room before she recognized that the lights were blue, not red. _Mock-emergency drill, _Raven realized as she took a deep breath. Nightwing had begun initiating their training sessions this way, insisting that no one wake up early to prepare. _Stupid "practice the way you perform" idea, _Raven snipped, resolving yet again to voice her disdain for the practice. _There's no point giving us heart attacks over a practice session. _Fully awake, Raven was surprised to see how tangled the sheets were around her, and she kicked them off with effort. She couldn't remember dreaming, but she must have been unusually active to make her toss and turn that much. Dismissing the issue, Raven teleported to the training fields around the tower.

* * *

She got there second, as usual, as Nightwing stood at the starting console. _How he manages to get here faster than me without a head start I will never understand. _She adopted her most irritated monotone, "Remind me again why it's necessary to initiate a routine training exercise with alarms?"

Nightwing chuckled as he lifted his coffee cup. _Wait, how does he have coffee already? _"Good morning to you too, Raven."

"Oh, good MORNING friend Raven!" Starfire's voice heralded her arrival, and she soared in with a graceful landing between Raven and NIghtwing. She leaned to kiss Nightwing on the cheek. "Boyfriend Nightwing."

"Brace for impact, Star," Nightwing responded with a grin, looking up towards the top of Titans Tower. Raven directed her own gaze there as well, and saw a flash of red and blue as Cybog's foot-rockets enhanced his leap from the roof. Two seconds later, he landed on one knee as forcefully as Starfire had gracefully, a wide grin on his face.

"Oh yeah!" Cyborg exclaimed enthusiastically, "Beat the green bean."

Raven saw the glint of green on Cyborg's shoulder, and but Nightwing beat her to it. "Actually Cyborg…"

And suddenly Changeling was sitting on Cyborg's shoulders.

"We tied," he finished for their leader.

"Wait, WHAT?!" Cyborg shouted as he registered the sudden weight on his shoulders. "You…. You hitched a RIDE on me?" He frantically reached up, attempting to grab the shapeshifter and throw him off.

Grinnning, Changeling became a Capuchin monkey and chattered wildly while dodging his friend's hands . Starfire giggled, and Nightwing waited a few seconds before coughing pointedly. The green simian somersaulted off of Cyborg's head and reverted back to human form, hands over his head in an acrobat's landing.

Unfortunately, he left his back to Cyborg.

"Ow," The green young man jumped as his hands flew to his freshly-kicked backside.

"Serves you right," Cyborg grumbled. "Turning me into a taxi…"

Nightwing cut him off. "Alright, Star and I were out late on patrol…"

Cyborg and Changeling broke into coughing fits simultaneously.

"…and Changeling and Raven took down Overload," Nightwing spoke over them, "so there's no need to push ourselves today. Instead, we'll get one good round in of close-range, then everyone's free to run the course or train free-style for an hour. Sound fair?" Everyone nodded, it was surprisingly light for a morning workout, but nobody was going to complain. "Cy and Star, you two go first, Changeling and I will go next." Normally after this combination, Nightwing would spar with Raven so she'd get a round in, as well, but he changed up the routine today. "Raven, you referee, we don't want to aggravate that burn."

Raven glanced down, realizing that she hadn't yet changed from the burnt leotard she wore yesterday, which revealed the still-unhealed redness of her lower-right ribcage. She drew her cloak around herself and nodded, hoping no one would ask questions.

Unfortunately, as Cyborg and Starfire took up positions, Changeling moved in beside her to do exactly that. "I thought you said you didn't need to go to the infirmary," he whispered.

Nightwing gave the start signal, and Starfire and Cyborg rushed at each other.

"I fell asleep," Raven insisted, failing to mention exactly when that was. "I intended to heal it this morning, but forgot about training." In truth, she had simply forgotten to take the five minutes necessary to heal herself, her emotional state taking priority.

Starfire and Cyborg locked arms, each attempting to overpower the other, until Cyborg side-stepped and allowed Starfire to soar past, straight into a small boulder.

Changeling had a wry smile on his face, "sure, that's what it is. I'm sure you just 'forgot' to heal yourself…."

Starfire flew at Cyborg, aiming for a leg-sweep…

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean?" Raven humored him enough to ask.

Cyborg leaped over Starfire, firing his thrusters to reverse his momentum,

"I think you just didn't want to have to spar with me," Changeling teased pseudo-arrogantly.

Cyborg was now lined up for a pile-driver over Star…

Raven surprised herself by looking away from the action to stare Changeling in the eye. "I'd have you pinned to the ground in five seconds, burn or no burn." She returned her gaze to the battle…

…As Starfire grabbed Cyborg's protruding elbow and did a barrel-roll, dragging him through the ground, literally. Cyborg's furrow ran a good forty feet, at which point Starfire let go, letting Cyborg come to a halt by colliding with a small tree.

Raven raised her hand to declare Starfire the victor, ignoring Changeling's stunned stare.

* * *

Changeling's mind had frozen. _"Did she just…? Did RAVEN really just? Surely she didn't realize...? How am I supposed to…?"_ His eye twitched.

* * *

Raven, for her part, was trying not to reveal her mortification at the double-entendre. _Where did that come from? Since when do I rise to his bait? _In hindsight, it wasn't even one of Changeling's better teases; she normally sparred with Nightwing or Starfire. _Why won't he stop __**staring**__ like that?_

* * *

A gravelly voice rumbled in Changeling's head, its words dripping with eagerness. _"I'd like to see her try. She would be a worthy challenger, a glorious battle of heated blood and will. And when it ended, we would be on top of her, close to her, ready to claim the rewards of victory…"_

"Changeling!" Nightwing called out for the second time, snapping his unbidden train of thought.

"Got it!" He called back, jogging past Cyborg, who was rubbing his head and mumbling about "deceitfully strong skinny chicks" as Starfire floated behind. Raven let out a breath, and behind her a small boulder dropped to the ground, breaking into four pieces.

Nightwing and Changeling met in a small clearing, free from debris or rocks. Garfield shook his head, trying not to focus on ideas of sparring with Raven, and if Nightwing noticed the dilation that gave his eyes a sharp, feline look, he didn't mention it. "What're the rules this time?" Garfield asked.

There were normally two rule sets Nightwing and Garfield would alternate between when sparring. The first was almost no-holds-barred, where Changeling could take any form under two tons, and Nightwing would use any weapons not deemed excessively dangerous. The second…

"No forms, no weapons," Nightwing responded, discarding his utility belt. _Oh, great,_ Changeling suppressed a groan, and instantly any thoughts of Raven's Freudian slip disappeared, replaced by thoughts of survival. He rarely escaped from these "sparring matches" without a thousand bruises. Nightwing was arguably the greatest martial artist on this side of Gotham, and spent a good 50% of his training time honing his unarmed combat. His reactions were perfect; instinctive, precise, fluid, and flexible between at least a dozen combat techniques. Changeling, on the other hand, spent more time on physical conditioning and honing his animal forms. While he was technically taller and stronger than his leader, his first instinct was to shift, not to fight, and that delayed his reactions more than enough for Nightwing to exploit.

But something was different about today.

Changeling could feel it; his blood was running… hotter, somehow. He rolled his shoulders and neck, and he could feel energy coursing through him as his muscles relaxed, settling instantly into action-ready flexibility. Feeling constricted, he opted to go shirtless, peeling off half his red and white uniform and casting the shirt aside. He settled into a boxing stance, squinting slightly against the early-morning light. Nightwing nodded, opting for an open-palm martial arts posture, as they both waited for the buzzer to start. Changeling's enhanced hearing picked up Cyborg attempting to bet Starfire that he'd last longer than three minutes before tapping out, while Starfire only expressed concern for their well-being.

_Hearing's sharper than normal _Changeling noted. _And shouldn't I be tired? Or sore, or something? I got what, three hours sleep? I feel like I could punch through a mountain right now…_

Then the buzzer went off. Instantly Nightwing went on the offensive, jumping high to come down with a potentially round-finishing spin kick, using the sun to blind his opponent. Changeling dived instinctively, rolling into a crouch facing where Nightwing landed…

…Except Nightwing wasn't there anymore. He'd followed the kick- a feint, Changeling realized-with an immediate springing jump directly at the shapeshifter, and his knee was only six inches from Changeling's face before the situation registered.

Changeling's only choice was to go backwards, so backwards he went. Pulling a "Neo," as he called it, his back stretched parallel to the ground and his head nearly rested on the dirt as he watched his blue-suited leader fly over him, knee just missing his jaw. As soon as Nightwing was clear he snapped upright and pivoted, returning to a boxing stance for no other reason than it guarded his face.

_Wow, I hope Cy got that on camera, _Changeling thought, _I've never pulled that off before. _The fact that his reactions were faster than normal, however, brought him little solace. They were ten seconds into the fight, and he was already on his heels.

* * *

Raven watched, attempting impassivity, as the two men sparred. The fact of the matter, though, was that she was finding it unusually difficult to concentrate. It wasn't until Nightwing dove for a match-ending knee to Changeling's face that she figured out why. There was a moment, brief, fleeting, but utterly captivating, where the green shapeshifter held himself parallel to the ground with nothing but his abdominals, and that was when Raven realized…

Garfield was shirtless.

It was rare that any of the Titans operated out-of-uniform, since alarms could call them into action literally 24/7. Most of the Titans didn't even bother with pajamas, opting instead to change from one uniform to the next. Starfire was the lone hold-out, but she had mastered the art of the quick-change, so it hardly made a difference. Raven actually preferred the convenience of a single outfit; It came in handy when Johnny Rancid decided to run his bike through a mall at 3 AM, and kept her fashion concerns as close to zero as she could possibly get them. So it was understandable that seeing a Titan out-of-uniform might be a bit distracting.

At least, that's what she told herself, as she watched Changeling flex and pop back up to a fighting stance, his back to her. As she did so, however, she couldn't help but notice the sculpted, muscular physique taught under smooth green skin. _Even his scars are beautiful… _Raven reflected, noticing the slightly paler green stripes. Two crossed his back, forming a nearly symmetrical X, while another lay across his lower-right ribs, wrapping around his hip to dip under his waistband just above his right buttocks…

Raven physically jerked as she snapped herself out of her idle stupor. Glancing to her left she was happy to see both Starfire and Cyborg too focused on the fight to have noticed her… _My what, exactly? Was I just… ogling Garfield? _She shook her head. _No, _she reasoned, _Nightwing made me referee. I just got distracted watching so closely. _

No one noticed the control console smoke behind her as she returned her attention to the fight.

* * *

Changeling stood, breathing heavily, as he and Nightwing circled each other. _He's not even out of breath, _he noted, glancing side-to-side for some kind of advantage.

Nightwing wasn't going to give him that chance. When Changeling's eyes darted to the right, Nightwing struck from his left, a quick jab slipping under Changeling's elbow and landing on his lowest rib.

Reflexively, Garfield struck back with a right cross as his left side caved, hoping to go over Nightwing's defenses and land a head shot, but Nightwing was too fast. He leaned behind the blow, leaving Changeling over-extended, and followed up with two quick jabs to Changeling's midsection before spinning into a high kick that landed across Garfield's shoulders, throwing him forward.

It was all Changeling could do to turn that new-found momentum into a forward roll, springing up with his arms to gain extra distance from his opponent. He landed wincing with new bruises already forming on his ribcage, and that was when the voice spoke.

_You are making us look foolish, _the baritone admonished. _Embrace me, and we will destroy him for this challenge. _

Garfield shook his head, listening for any sign of an oncoming assault. _Not that kind of fight. _

_ You need not __**become **__me to embrace me, _the voice argued. _Feel the fire in your veins even now, available to you. __**She **__has brought me out, and now the instincts of every predator known to man are yours to draw from, so __**use them. **_

Changeling paused, conflicted.

_Or are you going to sit here and be bested, again, in front of her? _

Garfield turned his head towards the audience. In the moment, all three stood frozen; Cyborg with a timer and his red eye illuminated, recording the battle for later analysis, Starfire floating, hands over her mouth to stop herself from calling out support for one party or the other, and Raven…

Raven stood there, seemingly impassive, with her hood shading her face. But Changeling's eyes were sharper than natural humans, and with the morning light he could see. More specifically, he could see her eyes, and in that moment they were looking directly back at his, a mixture of concern and…. something else, calling him to turn around and _fight. _

Something shifted inside him, and Changeling's eyes narrowed, pupils dilating to thin slits. His ear twitched as he picked up the distinct swirl of air as Nightwing came in from behind him and to the right….

Changeling twisted, reaching around behind his right shoulder to grab Nightwing's extended leg with both hands. The suddenness of the move, especially without looking, caught Nightwing off guard, and Changeling could hear Starfire's surprised gasp. With a growl, Changeling heaved, ripping Nightwing from the ground and spinning him by his captured leg a full 180 degrees before Changeling let go. Nightwing flew nearly 40 feet before twisting and landing in a deep crouch, appraising his teammate with a new level of competitive respect.

Changeling, for his part, simply turned to face Nightwing, newfound courage in his stance. _He is fast, but we are strong, _the voice appraised. _Accept his stings in order to land blows, and when he is battered, and then we will strike in earnest. _

Nightwing, however, was taking the cautious approach. Settling into a Muay Thai stance more conducive to kickboxing, he waited for Changeling to make the take the offensive.

He was more than happy to oblige. He crouched, then skyrocketed upwards, using the sun to blind his opponent just as Nightwing had at the beginning of the match.

Unlike his opponent, Changeling left a dent in the ground when he landed. Nightwing had leapt clear at the last moment, and now it was Changeling's turn to pursue. Three bounds later he had caught his quarry, and his hand found Nightwing's collar, halting his attempt to find higher ground.

NIghtwing turned, feeding the momentum into a leg sweep, but Changeling mere leaped over it. While airborne, Changeling drew his feet up, and he could see Nightwing's eyes widen in alarm. Nightwing brought his other leg up to finish the spin with a back-heel kick, but he never got there. The instant Nightwing's turn brought his back into view, Changeling kicked out **hard. **

This time it was Nightwing's turn to be launched forward, but because of their weight and power differences he didn't have nearly the control Changeling had gotten. The ever-graceful Nightwing found himself rolling like a log on the hard ground, bouncing twice before managing to right himself and settle into a crouch, one hand on the ground for stability. His other hand instinctively flew to his missing utility belt, a rare sign of desperation for the acrobat during these sessions.

Across from him, Changeling just grinned.

* * *

Raven heard Starfire's strangled gasp as Changeling's kick sent her boyfriend sprawling. Though he managed to right himself, Raven could see scuff marks on his blue uniform- unusual even during some of their more intense villain skirmishes.

She turned her attention green collegue. He stood not in any formal stance, but with his arms hanging loose in front of him, dangling from slightly hunched shoulders enhanced by his forward-leaning posture. It was more ape-like than anything, enhanced with a toothy grin that reminded her of a documentary on sharks he'd flooded the common room with several weeks earlier. She felt a rush wash through her at the sight, a mixture of intimidation and a strange draw she couldn't define. There was something…. powerful… about his posture, and she wanted to know what it was…

Nightwing had had enough of being chased, it seemed, and he sprung at his larger opponent with a flurry of blows too fast to track. She could hear several of them land, but Changeling barely bothered defending. When Nightwing went for a right cross to his opponent's cheek he was stopped short, and found his right hand encased in a large green fist, unable to pull back.

Changeling jerked the ensnared hand across his body to his hip, pulling Nightwing off-balance before releasing and whipping his hand across Nightwing's face with a smack that echoed off the Tower and lifted Nightwing from the ground.

"HOLY…" Cyborg stepped back in shock.

Starfire actually started towards the fight before she caught herself. "Please, is that not what they call the slap of bi…."

"Yeah Star," Cyborg cut her off. "That's exactly what that was…"

Changeling, however, wasn't done. With Nightwing reeling, Changeling sank his fist directly up and into his opponent's solar plexus, then followed up with a knee thrust to the exact same location.

Nightwing returned to the ground for the first time since the slap, miraculously on his feet, and backpeddaled as best he could with the air gone from his lungs. He made it only four steps before his back was pressed against a hard rock face, and a sinking feeling settled in his stomach that had nothing to do with the blows. He flashed his eyes to the side, looking for an escape route, but before he could make a break for it…

* * *

Raven gasped as Changeling moved. One moment he was several feet from his opponent, the next moment NIghtwing dangled, pinned against the boulder by a massive green hand. Changeling's hand... Around his neck... Suspending him off the ground. Nightwing struggled for a second, and if he'd had air in his lungs might have even found an escape, but as it stood he was more than beaten and everyone knew it.

_He's been dominated, _Raven thought, as she stared in wonder at the muscular green arm that held her leader immobile. _Without shifting, Changeling took the best martial artist in 100 miles and beat the crap out of him, then pinned him to the wall. _There were no words for it except… _hot…_

Raven clamped down on that sentiment immediately, and realized that she was responsible for calling the end of the match. A match that was clearly over; and if Changeling didn't let up soon would end with an unconscious Nightwing…

* * *

"ENOUGH" Raven's voice snapped Changeling out a battlefield haze, and he dropped his arm, staggering back to give Nightwing room to breathe and recover.

"Dude, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.."

Nightwing's raised hand cut him off. Nightwing coughed a few times, getting the air back into his lungs as the others arrived from their vantage point. "Nice match," he croaked, attempting to chuckle.

"Boyfriend Nightwing, are you unharmed?" Starfire landed beside her boyfriend, crouching to help him up.

"Yeah, Star, I'll be fine," Nightwing dismissed. "I'm going to have a nice bruise from that backhand, though." He rolled his jaw gingerly and looked at Changeling. "Nice shot, by the way."

"Hell yeah, about time you opened a can of whoop-ass on 'Wing," Cyborg cut Changeling off before he could respond.

"Lucky shot," Changeling dismissed, shrugging.

_That's weird, _Raven thought. _No celebrating the win?_

"Yeah, well," Cyborg replied, "that was some luck. I don't think I've ever seen you move like that."

"I must still have some energy left from Overload," Changeling joked, rolling his shoulders.

_He said that yesterday, too. _

The comment though, seemed to give Cyborg an idea. "Hey, if you've still got some energy, wanna make a run on the course?"

Changeling beamed at the idea. "Dude, yeah, let's tear it up!"

Cyborg was already moving towards the control console. "Sweet, I'll get it fired up. Star, you and Wing wanna go…. Wait a second."

That got the rest of the team's attention.

"What's wrong Cyborg?" asked Nightwing

"The control's not responding," Cyborg keyed in the activation sequence. He popped the latches for the display and lifted it up on hinges, coughing and waving his arm at the smoke that rushed out. "That's weird, control unit looks like it just blew up, might have overheated or gotten water into it that caused a short-circuit." He paused to assess the damage. "I can have it patched up in ten minutes or so, but I'll need a new motherboard from the storage room. Rae, can you go grab one for me? I'll work on it here in the meantime, it'll take some re-wiring to save the memory."

Raven just nodded and sank into the ground.

* * *

She reappeared in the common room, making her way immediately for the tea cabinet. _Cyborg's in no hurry for the part, _she justified. _And if I'm going to get up like this just to watch everyone else train, I'm at least going to get my morning tea. _

It wasn't until the tea was already set to steep that she realized something was different. _This isn't my usual morning green tea, this is Siberian Ginseng. I only reach for Siberian Ginseng when I'm stressed, or need to calm down…_

Several possible explanations for the subconscious change in behavior presented themselves, but it was impossible to ignore what she knew. _Azar, why did he have to be shirtless? _

* * *

_A/N: Okay, I know, one of my more abrupt cliffhangers, but I've really been wrestling with this next chapter and want to get it right, since it focuses on Changeling and I'm trying to make the most of his limited screen time. This is kind of the set-up chapter for a big reveal in the next that I've honestly been trying to get for for six chapters now, so hopefully it doesn't take me long to get that written up. In any case, I hope you guys liked the action in this one, I remember the first BB-Robin sparring match like this I ever read was a great story someone wrote where Raven makes a bet on the match; if BB won, she'd go on a date with him, but I can't remember who wrote it. In any case, let me know what you think in the reviews, I swear every one is cherished and may get you a private message if your feedback is especially memorable. _

_ Hope to hear from you soon, _

_ TwistedPremise_


	9. Training, Part 2

A/N: Wow, guys! 18 review in 24 hours, with a new record of 19 for a chapter! I love you all, I really do, and I'll be sure to reply to as many as I can soon. In the meantime, here's my longest chapter yet, with no fewer than four points of view, three scenes, and 4,000 words. Enjoy!

Also: I was joking about the snake named Garfield from last chapter, though that would be epic. A Raven named Raven would be funny though, or maybe a canary named Nightwing? Anyway, I still don't own anything related to the Teen Titans. Sorry.

* * *

Raven returned to the course precisely seven minutes after first disappearing, a new monitor control board in her hands. She stepped out of her portal and passed the part directly into Cyborg's waiting hand.

"Thank you very much," Cyborg greeted without looking up from the circuitry in front of him.  
Raven simply nodded, directing her attection to the spectacle in the sky above them. It appeared that in her absence and Cyborgs busy-ness two of the remaining team members had taken up new game, a cross between dodgeball and tag often used for long-range or flight training. Raven watched as Starfire dove after a green hawk, occasionally tossing low-power starbolts at her quarry. Changeling's job was simple- attempt to escape long enough to disappear.

Theoretically, the game should have been over before Raven even got back. Starfire was the fastest flier on the team, and her starbolts were both accurate and limitless. Raven only survived any extended period during this game by using shields and teleporting, which made her hard to predict.

Changeling, however, was quick and agile. One second he was diving straight down as a hawk, the next he was using a condor's wingspan to stop in mid-air and allow a starbolt to pass under him. _It's like he has eyes in the back of his head, _Raven mused, as the condor became a hummingbird and not only dodged a flurry of bolts, but zipped tauntingly around Starfire herself before…

_A squid?_ Raven wondered, as the sea creature plummeted towards the bay. _Why would he…_

Her question was answered when she caught sight of Starfire screaming towards the water herself. Orange-tinted skin and red hair had been indiscriminately dyed black, and it was clear she wasn't aiming for any one location as much as towards water in general.

Raven just shook her head. _Haven't seen that one before. That's just dirty. _She was so distracted by Starfire's plight that she didn't notice the green sparrow coming until it slipped beside her and reverted to a-thankfully fully dressed- shapeshifter.

He knelt down, using a large rock to shield himself from the bay. "Oh hey Rae," he greeted.

She opted to support her alien friend. "She's going to kill you, and you deserve it."

He chuckled, grinned, and cringed all at once. "Yeah, probably. You wouldn't let her do that though, would you Raven? I mean, that's **your** job…"

Raven's stare betrayed no such sentiment. "Oh come on," he moaned, "I haven't won that game in weeks! I had to try something new…"

The poor guy didn't even get a chance to flinch before the starbolt collided with his backside.

Changeling whirled, hands first flying to his smoking rear, then out in front of him in a placating gesture. "Oh hey, Star, I didn't see you there…"

Sure enough, a thoroughly sopping wet and thoroughly pissed-off Starfire was stalking towards him, eyes and hands glowing green. "You are a royal Florbnargh," she declared, drawing back to release another bolt.

Changeling turned his face and braced for impact….

…But the bolt never landed.

Raven, Changeling, and Cyborg turned their attention to Starfire, who was staring at Changeling with a look of deep confusion.

Changeling risked it. "Uh, Star, are you o…" His question tapered off as Starfire flew past him determinedly. "Dude, what got into her?"

Nightwing dropped down from a ledge, presumably returning from his vantage point for the game of tag. "I saw the squid trick. Changeling still have all his limbs?"

"Yeah," Cyborg answered, "She blasted him in the butt, lined up for another round, then got distracted by nothing, stared at him like he grew an extra head."

"Odd." Nightwing turned to Changeling. "You have any idea what's going on…? Changeling?"

Changeling, however, was frozen, eyes wide in dawning panic. Raven could feel the fear locking him physically and emotionally in rigid stasis. Slowly Cyborg, Raven, and Nightwing turned to follow their teammate's gaze and found themselves watching an approaching Starfire…

…carrying Changeling's uniform?

* * *

Changeling watched Starfire approach and braced for the seemingly innocuous question that undoubtedly would lead to the awkward answer he'd been avoiding for years…

"Florbnargh Changeling,"

-and apparently he was still on the hook for the squid thing-

"When did you retrieve a new uniform?" Three heads pivoted back to Changeling as Starfire continued. "Prior to your combat with boyfriend Nightwing you removed this and left it in the clearing, yet now you possess the full attire. You never returned to the Tower."

_Okay, let's see how easily we can get out of this… _"Umm, would you believe I keep a spare in my pocket?"

From the looks of it, no one did. _Okay, time for another approach. _"You guys do realize I'm a shapeshifter, right?" Nobody dignified that with a response. "Well, you see, they don't really make a fabric that can cover transitions like snake-to-cheetah or fish-to-T-rex. For Elasti-girl or the Atom, unstable molecules or a compression matrix fabric work fine, since they only change size, not shape. But those won't work for me, so my uniform's not really a suit, per se, it's… part of me. Like a shell, or layer of scales."

Starefire brightened slightly as realization hit. "Then this is why your uniform disappears when you transform?" Raven and Cyborg appraised Starfire with confusion. "You have not noticed? When Changeling becomes an animal, that animal is green, not red and white like his uniform. It was the same when he was Beast Boy; only green animals, no purple."

The rest of the team reflected on that for a minute before nodding.

Changeling chuckled, relieved. _Okay, that went better than expected. _"Yeah, Star, that's why. I don't need the costume then, so it just kinda goes away."

"You mean you reincorporate it," Nightwing mused. "I figured it was something like that. Explains why you never have uniforms lying around in the laundry room, or order new ones."

"Wait," Cyborg interjected. "You mean that uniform's actually part of you? Like, hair or fingernails part of you?" Changeling shrugged, nodding. "So why does it look like a uniform?"

_Oh boy, _Changeling took a deep mental breath. "It's a mental picture thing."

The confused expressions around him made it clear he needed to elaborate. "Okay, uh, it's kind of hard to explain, but you have to understand how the whole 'shifting' thing works. I can't just think 'horse' and become a horse, I have to _know _what a horse is. Four legs, hairy tail, about 16 hands tall, rough idea of the skeleton, that kind of stuff. I have to have a mental picture of what I want to become, basically. My subconscious and DNA fill in the gaps for when I don't know everything, or don't have the time to think about it."

The nodding indicated that they were following the explanation so far.

"The other thing about being a shapeshifter is that there's always a question about your 'natural' appearance. Look at Martian Manhunter, he rarely ever uses his Martian form, it's always his clothed, superhero appearance. So which is his 'natural' form?"

The question was rhetorical, but Nightwing anwered it anyway. "The one he reverts to when he doesn't have control anymore."

"Exactly! Mostly." Changeling was getting animated in his dialogue. "Basically, taking any form that isn't your most natural requires focus, maintaining it does too, just less than the actual shifting. So when I fall asleep, get knocked out, or otherwise forget to maintain my form, I go back to 'default.'"

"And this is the 'default' for you?" Starfire finished the logic, indicating Changeling as he stood before them.

"Exactly," Changeling settled down a bit. "When I let my subconscious tell me what to look like, this is what comes out. It's my 'default,' uniform and all.

"But your default has changed," Nightwing observed pointedly.

"Yeah, with the Doom Patrol," Changeling nodded. "I've actually had three 'defaults' over my lifetime. The first was how I appeared when I first turned green. Mento says that image became so implanted in my brain that I couldn't override it until I was ten. Some combination of that mental image and my DNA is what prevents me from maintaining any human appearance without certain key features, like green skin or the chick-magnet ears."

He got several eye-rolls from that one, everyone but Starfire, actually. "But anyway, when I was ten that mental image of myself conflicted too heavily with my body and subconscious. See, they both _knew_ that I needed to look older, but my mental default hadn't caught up yet. Mento helped me then, diving into my head to release the mental block and reveal my new default, the one from when you guys met me."

Suddenly, Changeling had disappeared, and in his place stood Beast Boy, the skinny green kid with a purple uniform. "This one stuck until I was able to work with Mento again when the Doom Patrol called me, that's when he helped release it and reveal this." Beast Boy spread his arms and suddenly Changeling stood before them again. "I mean, the body, at least. The costume was an add-on, Mento helped me set that too, after Rita and I designed it. A little hypnosis, and now it's my default appearance! That's why when I shifted back after flying with Star I grew another shirt, I just forgot I'd taken the last one off."

"And you can just **do **that?" Cyborg sounded impressed. "Just peel off your shirt and grow a new one? I thought you said it was part of you, like skin."

"I said it was like scales, or a shell," Changeling qualified. "And lots of animals shed their skins, scales, or shells," Changeling dismissed. "We cut our hair and nails and it doesn't hurt. Heck, lots of animals regrow whole limbs, at least simple ones like tails. Is it really so weird that a shapeshifter who grows his own clothes can take them off whenever he wants?"

Cyborg thought about that for a minute. "Heck, when you put it that way…"

Starfire squealed, causing them both to jump. "You are like friend Cyborg!"

Now Changeling was confused. "Wait, how now?"

Nightwing answered for her, anticipating her logic. "Technically, Cyborg don't wear a uniform either. His is a part of him, like yours, apparently."

Cyborg had to defend his pride. "Except, of course, mine's bulletproof and doesn't come off."

Changeling just chuckled at his metal friend. _Alright, let's wrap this up before it gets awkward. _"Whatever you say, big man. It's not gonna help you beat me through the course, though," he teased. "You got that ready yet?"

"Oh yeah," Cyborg slammed the cover plate down and powered the controls up. "She's good to go. First to the finish line?"

"You got it," Changeling grinned. "Who's next after I beat the vending machine? Rae?"

The other Titans turned, having forgotten that Raven was even standing behind them. She'd been silent during their conversation, and even now she just shook her head. "I'm going to meditate and.. recover," she intoned, and sank into the ground before anyone could respond.

Starfire cast a quizzical look at her boyfriend for clarification.  
"She still hasn't healed the burn from yesterday," Nightwing explained, starting the countdown for the obstacle race before turning towards the two other guys. "Star and I will go next. No injuries, you two."

"You got it, 'Wing," Cyborg promised, as he settled into a three-point stance for takeoff.

Changeling opted for a tiger form, snorting as he prepared to run. _Was it just me, or Raven seem paler than usual before she left? _Dismissing it, he focused on the course in front of him. The voice was quiet for now, but he got the feeling it had only been partially satisfied with his match with Nightwing. _Might be time to revisit the forest, _he considered, just before the buzzer sounded. His last thought before getting caught up in the action was one of relief. _I'm just glad nobody made a big deal out of the fact that I'm technically…_

* * *

_Naked. _Raven reappeared in her room, head spinning. _No real clothes means that whatever that uniform looks or feels like, it's skin to him. _She sat on the edge of her bed for stability. _It's no big deal, _she told herself. _ He said it himself, it's like a shell, a turtle shell. _She took several deep breaths, calming her rapid heartbeat. _He's just like Cyborg, it's not technically clothing, but it might as well be. No use focusing on the fact that Garfield's technically naked… all the time… including when I hugged him last night… _

The sound of ripping echoed in her room, and Raven turned to see that her black-out curtains lay in tattered pieces on the floor. Instinctively she flew over to them to survey the damage when movement outside caught her attention.

Cyborg was blasting at a series of drones that peppered him with low-power laser bursts, but they proved too mobile for his sonic cannon to hit. Rather than target them individually, however, Cyborg seemed to be forcing the drones towards each other, into a cluster…

Suddenly, a green eagle dove from above and shifted into an octopus, grabbing all four at once and ripping them apart. Still on its way down, the octopus was replaced by an armadillo which curled into a ball just as a sonic blast launched it straight towards a steel barricade. Just before he made impact the armadillo grew to a rhinocerous and bulldozed his way straight through the sheet metal, leaving a hole for Cyborg to charge through and across the finish line.

_They certainly work well together, _Raven noted, impressed by the teamwork of that last maneuver. She watched idly as Changeling reverted to his human form and pumped his fist at the result- a new course record. Jokingly, he flexed in a classic bodybuilder pose and the glass in front of Raven cracked in a spiderweb pattern, obscuring her view.

Raven flinched away from the window, shielding her face with her hand. She reflexively ran her hand through her hair, and cringed at the greasy feeling. _A quick shower, then meditation, _she reasoned. _A nice, hot shower will clear my mind, and I certainly need it. _It had beed almost 24 hours since Raven got a shower, 24 hours which included a fight with Overload, getting burned, and a trip to Nevermore._ Cleaning up will help me calm down, Azar knows I couldn't reach my center in this state. _

Raven made her way to her en suite bathroom, hanging her cloak on a hook by the door on the way. She habitually checked that she had a fresh uniform on the counter before starting the water. There were few things worse than having to explain to everyone that you were last to arrive because you were in the shower when Johnny Rancid attacked and you didn't have a spare uniform ready to change into in a hurry.

Setting the water slightly warmer than usual, Raven peeled off the burned leotard, wincing as she bent down to pull it down and aggravated her burned ribs. _Good thing the showerhead's adjustable, _Raven thought as she reached in to twist the removable attachment, shifting the stream to a gentle flow. _I'll heal as soon as I get to meditate, I'll just be careful for now. _

The steam escaping her spacious walk-in shower confirmed that the water was sufficiently hot, so Raven gingerly stepped in and closed the fogged glass door. Savoring the sensation, she closed her eyes and stepped under the scalding spray, letting the water soak into her hair and soothe her tensed muscles. She released a deep breath, running her hands through her hair to ensure a thorough soaking, as she felt the grime and stress alike wash down the drain. She luxuriated in the feeling, and for a brief moment, her mind went completely still.

As she reached for the shampoo, she could faintly hear the sound of a hydraulic door sliding. She didn't think much of it, Silkie had apparently learned to operate doors recently- a trick she slightly suspected Garfield had taught him- and her friends never entered her room uninvited anyway.

She was just starting to lather her hair when a tap on the shower door alerted her to someone's presence. Raven cracked the door and found herself staring at a pair of green pectorals. Her eye's widened, but she kept her calm as she pulled her gaze up to his eyes, which clearly and confidently stared into her own.

"Hey Rae, my shower's busted, and I gotta meet Cy downstairs in ten to head to town. Mind if I join you?" His voice was confident, so casual that it never occurred to Raven to say no.

She stepped aside, giving him room to enter, and he grinned in thanks. Raven's peripheral vision picked up the stark white of a towel wrapped around his waist, though she turned away as he let it fall to the floor. She occupied herself with working the shampoo into her hair, her back to him. She could feel him behind her as he stepped into the stream of water, ricochet droplets wetting her back.

Raven had never been more aware of their height difference: she felt dwarfed by the foreign entity behind her, keenly aware of his every movement without needing either sight or touch. Every nerve felt alive, and the air was thick with tension.

She reached for the body wash, a simple, scentless brand she preferred, but it slipped from her wet hands. Garfield chuckled behind her, a deep, masculine sound. He bent to retrieve the bottle, bringing his head and torso into view. "Let me help you with that," he insisted, leaving no room for negotiation.

Raven heard the bottle snap closed, the sound of soap lathering, then sound was rendered irrelevant.

Two hands, _Garfields large, strong, callused, sharp-tipped hands, _rubbed her shoulders, sliding smoothly with soap. Water ricochet misted her as he kneaded her tense muscles, finding knots and working them out with meticulous thoroughness before sliding down, thumbs working small, firm circles down either side of her spine. This was no oil-and-lavender massage, Garfields hands were forceful and strong, roughness only offset by the soap and water, but the results were unmistakable.

The pressure forced Raven to place her hands on the tile to let his fingers dig in to the knots, and she spread her feet slightly for balance. She could feel tension she didn't even know she was carrying melt like ice from her muscles, and she suppressed the urge to hum. Changeling's hands reached her lower spine, and rather than venture any lower Raven felt them slide up her sides, around the pink tissue on her right, over her shoulders, lifting her hair up to slide underneath and gain access to the back of her neck.

Raven couldn't help it, when Garfield's thumb worked a kink out of her neck she let out a short, guttural moan, followed by a deep sigh. She heard him chuckle behind her, and his hand pulled away to re-lather. Raven stood there, letting the water flow over her as she rolled her neck and shoulders, marveling in the release of tension.

Changeling's hands returned, running up and down her arms, soaping them top and bottom before splitting up. His right hand slid over her shoulder, under her wet hair and mixed in with her tresses, scratching lightly at the base of her scalp.

His left glided down her ribs and reached around to her stomach, soaping her taut abdomen in gradually expanding circles. Raven was in a daze, reveling in the moment, unsure what would happen next, but when Garfield's hand rose to brush the base of her breast…

* * *

Raven jerked, her eyes flying open as a pounding echoed from her bedroom door. She twisted left and right to confirm what the sinking in her stomach already knew… She was alone in the shower.

"Hey Rae," She heard Changeling's voice call, muffled by the two doorways and space between them. "Cy wanted me to bring you a new communicator, since yours got destroyed and all." He paused as though waiting for a reply. "Okay uhhh… I'll just leave it by your door, then, okay?"She could feel his presence recede down the hall as she retracted her sense.

Raven glanced down at herself, recognizing with wide eyes that her own left hand rested just below her right breast… _Exactly where his was…_

She could hear the mirror shatter in her vanity, and what sounded like more than a few books hit the floor.

She slumped on the tile, too dazed to even turn off the water. _Azar, help me._

* * *

Changeling found himself approaching Raven's door after his workout, new communicator in tow. He knocked, expecting the usual half-open-door-monotone-stare routine for having interrupted her meditation… again. When he got no response, he opted for the vocal approach. "Hey Rae," sometimes that was enough to merit an open door. No such luck this time. "Cy wanted me to bring you a new communicator, since yours got destroyed and all." No need to mention that he'd volunteered for the gig, intending to make sure she'd healed that burn like she said she would.

When he still got no response, he put his ear against the door. Now, to most people, this would be an exercise in futility. Cyborg's privacy, security, and all around construction concerns ensured that every room in the tower was more or less acoustically isolated, so attempting to listen through a wall or door was basically pointless.

Changeling, however, was not most people. His hearing was adjustably sensitive, though never any less potent than your best-hearing-endowed humans. Naturally, he resided somewhere between a horned owl and a particularly alert mouse. When he set his mind to it, however, he could literally hear a pin drop on shag carpet. Two counties over. This was how he could pick up the distinct sound of water rushing through two doors and an acoustic mousetrap of a bedroom.

_She's in the shower, _he paled a bit, begging his mind not to start drawing pictures. _It's cool, she's not gonna answer the door. I'll just.. ah… leave this here for her. _

"Okay uhhh… I'll just leave it by your door, then, okay?" he managed, turning and striding just a little faster than necessary towards the elevator. _Yeah, _he thought as an all-too-familiar growling sensation reestablished itself in his core. _Definitely gonna need to head out to the forest tonight._

* * *

Meanwhile, Starfire was celebrating a glorious run through the obstacle course with one of her favorite brunches. True, boyfriend Nightwing and she hadn't broken the new record, but she was confident they would do so next time. As she finished topping her guacamole pancakes with whipped cream and hot sauce, she made a mental note to add regular mustard to the shopping list. Somehow her teammates had forgotten that the mustard of "da john" was not suitable for anything earlier than mid-afternoon.

She floated to where she knew she would find her boyfriend, Nightwing would most certainly be in his room of records, pretending to review training footage while he caught up on the Gotham Knight's scores. She smiled as she remembered the day she had caught him with a sportscenter tab on his computer. He was so adorable when he was flustered.

She keyed the door open, peeking her head around the door frame. "Boyfriend Nightwing, would you not care to join me in the partaking of breakfast?" Nine times out of ten he'd decline, but it was always worth asking.

"No thanks, Star, I got my coffee already" Nightwing offered her a smile and indicated the mug on his desk.

"Very well," she conceded, knowing this gave her more to leverage when asking for future, more 'intimate' outings. "Will you be finished in time for the program of disgusting careers?"

She got a chuckle for her persistence. "Yeah, Star, I'll be there soon."

She beamed and left him to his ball of feet.

* * *

Starfire floated out of the doorway and it slid closed behind her. Nightwing returned his attention to his monitor, minimizing the sports report hiding his true interests: Cyborg's video of his fight with Changeling. Nightwing watched as his knee missed it's target by millimeters, though he certainly had to give the shapeshifter credit for the dodge. He focused intently on the next sequence, looking for something… anything…

_There. _Nightwing backed the video up and paused it. There was a moment, when Changeling was recovering from the kick that threw him into a roll, that something _changed. _He zoomed in on his teammate's face and was rewarded by an epiphany. _His eyes. _

Indeed, Changeling's eyes, which were pointed almost directly at the camera, had narrowed into cat-like slits, like snakes or a nocturnal predator. Nightwing keyed a screenshot, which rested in a corner of the screen as the video resumed. He watched, cringing, as Changeling caught his kick and threw him like a rag doll, like he weighed nothing. He continued watching as his evasive maneuvers failed, and he was launched into a clumsy roll. _I can't let this video get out, I'd never hear the end of it._

But it wasn't himself he was interested in. He paused the screen where he and Changeling faced each other prior to his final- unsuccessful- push. Changeling's posture had changed dramatically. From a martial arts point of view it was suicidal. Leaning forward, arms dangling, no defense, he was just _asking_ to be hit. It was raw, it was untrained, it was… _wild. _Nightwing's eye's narrowed, and he pulled up an old video file from the archives. The picture was dark, but in the shadows Nightwing could clearly see a large, vaguely apelike form with a large underbite.

Nightwing pulled the two images up side-by-side and ran a quick analysis algorithm, but he didn't need the results to come up before he knew.

The two postures were exactly the same. On the left, Beast Boy's "Beast," the manifestation of wild animal instincts. On the right, Changeling during this morning's sparring match.

_I wasn't fighting Changeling, _Nightwing rested his elbows on the desk, left hand covering right fist, in a posture he'd unconsciously picked up from his mentor. _I was fighting his other side. Or is the line between them so clear? _

Bringing up the video of the battle, Nightwing rewound to the first moment he could identify Changeling's eyes changing. Hey keyed in one more software, a more complex one that called in data from the nearby security cameras around the island, as well as Cyborg's own data. The computer began composing 3-dimensional model of the island during that moment of the film, including the Titan's pasture and locations. As the model processed, Nightwing made an additional inquiry: Define line-of-sight for each Titan.

He reached for his coffee, flipped over to the Gotham Knights results, sighed in defeat, opened his bank website, transferred $100 to the account of one "Ray Horper," wondered how Speedy even keeps a secret identity with aliases like that, took a long drink, set his coffee down, and flipped back to the model processing just as the progress bar reached 100%.

His eyes narrowed as the model confirmed his hypothesis: Changeling went from normal to super-fighter with the aid of his other side… _the instant he made eye contact with Raven_. Robin sighed, filed all the evidence in an inconspicuously named folder on his personal hard drive, and shut the computer down.

He still wasn't sure what it all meant, but he knew there was more going on than Changeling would have him believe.

He rose, heading to the common room to keep his promise to Starfire. _And if Changeling won't tell me what's going on, perhaps Raven can. _


	10. Changeling's Escape

A/N: Hello, dear readers. Again, I own nothing related to the Teen Titans, but I may start reffering to my laptop as "Victor." In any case, thank you all so much for the feedback, I promise I'll address the few questions that got brought up soon, but I just _had _to post this chapter, the Muse spoke and I absolutely love the ending, it caught even me by surprise.

* * *

Raven was having hard time getting up from the tile floor of her shower. She sat there, arms wrapped around her legs as she stared through the tile in front of her, water cascading down the wall over her head and drenching her back and hair. She could not honestly describe how long she sat there or what thoughts passed through her head, all that mattered was the pounding of her racing heart and the steady dripping of water from her bangs. The alarms could have sounded, apocalypse could have threatened, even had Trigon himself ripped the roof off of Titans tower and peeled back the ceiling to attack her, nothing could have stirred her, nothing would have penetrated the literal and figurative fog around her in that time.

Once the water chilled, steam settling to fat droplets and converting her skin to a tapestry of goosebumps did Raven regain awareness enough to rise. She moved gingerly, robotically, paying no mind to the cracks in the shower tiles or the freezing chill of the water crashing over her. Her eyes remain wide and dilated, looking nowhere but straight ahead as her hands completed the task of washing her. The shampoo had long since rinsed from her black tresses, but the body wash rested undisturbed where she always left it, so it was retrieved, lathered into a washcloth, and returned without incident. Later, Raven stepped out of the shower, grabbed her towel to dry off, and wondered idly if she'd washed her legs.

Then, when she stepped out of the restroom into her own room, she wondered when she'd healed her side, or gotten dressed, because both had happened but she could remember neither.

As she crossed the room she wondered when the bookshelf had broken, splaying her collection of poetry across the floor.

And finally, as she stared into her reflection, she wondered why she was going to Nevermore.

* * *

The portal opened, and Raven stepped onto a metal catwalk over what appeared to be an infinite warehouse of computer bays. The air was cold and the lights were dim, and a the dull whirring of computer hard drives permeated the air.

"Hello Raven," Raven turned to see Reason, yellow cloak standing in stark contrast to the grey environment.

"Where are we?" Raven questioned, "and why am I here?"

Reason's snort was half a chuckle, and she offered half a grin to match. "This is my domain, though not part of it that I pay much attention to."

"What happened to the library?"

Reason pointed up. "Next level up, but it's temporarily shut down."

"Why?"

Reason just stared at her. "You couldn't handle it."

"Excuse me?" Raven was incredulous.

Reason looked out over the humming servers, formulating her answer as she rested her elbows on the railing. "The library is your center of conscious memory and thought," she began. "You shut it down because you didn't want to think anymore."

"I didn't want to _feel _anymore," Raven argued. "They were running rampant, putting ideas in my head…"

"Oh please," Reason cut her off, turning to stare her down. "You were feeling just fine until Garfield knocked on the door. Thinking fine, too, thank you very much."

"Wait, you're saying _you _were involved in that?" Raven was flabbergasted, and a little mortified.

"Myself, Timid, Affection, and Happy, yes."

Raven seemed unable to process this revelation. Knowledge sighed, "Raven, I have many facets. Reason, knowledge, and yes, Imagination, are among them."

"There was no _Reason _in that!" Raven

"But there was plenty of thought. _Your _thoughts, I might add," the yellow aspect quipped.

"What?" Raven was incredulous.

"Well, unless there was some mind-control element in play none of us knows about, those thoughts were entirely your own."

"Affection must have…"

"No no no," Reason cut her off. "Your Affection certainly provided the inspiration, but you and I chose to go that direction."

"I don't remember ever choosing…"

"The door."

"What?" Raven was just confused this time.

"The door opening and closing when you were in the shower. You heard it, dismissed it, and then the Affection in you wondered 'what if it wasn't Silkie?' In that moment, you had a decision to make. You could have chosen Reason, but you chose Imagination." The yellow doppelganger folded her arms. "And then you couldn't handle the results, and shut down the library so you wouldn't have to think about it."

Raven's head was spinning. "That's not, it can't be…" She steadied herself on the railing.

Knowledge was unrelenting. "Think about this. When Garfield asked to join you in the shower, did it even occur to you to say no?"

Raven tried to remember, but the fact that nothing came to mind was answer enough.

"And every moment after, you knew something was off, didn't you? He'd never actually try that on us, and you wouldn't let him if he did, so why did it take someone banging on the door to make you realize it wasn't real?"

Raven's eyes were closed tight, desperately trying to think of a rebuttal…

"I'll tell you why," Knowledge persisted. "You _wanted _that fantasy. You refused to act on any of your desires, as Brave would have you do, so you sought out exploration and satisfaction through imagination. _You _chose imagination over reason, allowed us to suspend disbelief, and when you faced the realities of what you dreamed of you shut down conscious thought so you wouldn't have to process and accept it."

Knowledge's voice grew softer. "But you forgot something. When your rational thought shut down, your emotions didn't, did they? You could still feel everything under your skin, humming like these machines, even as you ignored them." Knowledge indicated the facility around them. "This is your subconscious memory, the place you store how to breathe, your muscle memory, and the subconscious thought related to emotion. Much of your daily decision-making happens here. All the things you don't think about, you just do? That's subconscious thought, and it's like a computer running background programs that let you surf the internet. So much happens behind the scenes that if you tried to control it all consciously you'd die, because you can't focus on that many things at once."

Raven found her gaze drifting over the incredible banks of automation as Knowledge continued, "And emotions operate here. You can't communicate or process them without conscious thought, of course, but you can certainly finish taking a shower or healing yourself without their interference. And as for why you're here? You're here because you _knew_ that you needed answers, so you came to me."

Raven shook her head as though breaking off cobwebs. "Okay. Okay, fine. I admit it, I was overwhelmed. I didn't realize that was in me, and the idea of what could have happened if it hadn't been interrupted... it terrified me." She stopped to take a breath. "So I shut it down." She narrowed her eyes in frustration. "That still doesn't tell me what I'm supposed to do about it."

Knowledge smiled. "Two things: One, take a nap."

Raven stared at her, incredulous.

"I'm serious," Knowledge put her hand on Raven's shoulder. "You're exhausted. You released so much energy with Overload, stayed up way too late working through a very complicated emotional knot, and then woke up early to have that knot retangled. Physically and emotionally, you're exhausted, and that left you particularly susceptible to emotional influence like the fantasy and the energy spikes that have torn up your room. You just got a shower, now go get some sleep."

Raven nodded wearily. It was true, every muscle in her body cried out for sleep.

"Second, once you're rested, come back to the library and we'll talk it out. I'll speak for the emotions, save you that exhaustion, and we'll figure this out, okay?"

Raven nodded, accepting the logic intrinsically. "Thank you."

Knowledge smiled. "I'm welcome."

Raven just slipped through the floor to her waiting bed in the Tower, and Knowledge knew she'd be asleep- reducing reason to almost nothing- in minutes.

From the computer bays a Raven-like voice called out. "Wow, was that fun or what?"

Knowledge grinned. "Yes, Affection, that was thoroughly enjoyable."

"By the way," the voice called back "where did you come up with the details for all that? The massage, his posture, it was PERFECT!"

"Oh," the metaphor for memory dismissed, "Raven got into those romance novels when she was seventeen, still has a few under her bed for those rainy days." She started walking back to the staircase, headed for her library. "I pulled some of the ideas from their more tame passages, though it's a shame I didn't get to explore some of the heavier concepts. We're not quite ready for that yet."

She could hear the lust in the voice, even through the computer-like interface. "Oh don't worry, she's falling asleep. Dreams are the perfect chance to let imagination and lust roam free. She got a taste of it last night, but she rarely remembers dreams." The voice paused in anticipation. "Just means we have to make it more memorable."

Reason's cloak rippled, fading to a lighter, pale yellow shade that indicated Raven had lost consciousness and only certain facets of knowledge could be accessed. Imagination grinned toothily, "I think I can help with that..."

* * *

The team normally did lunch independently, following their own late-morning and afternoon schedules and appetites, so nobody took much notice of Raven's absence after training. Cyborg spent the time doing "preventative maintenance" on the T-ship until he traded places in the kitchen with Starfire and Nightwing, who had finished their program and were headed out to do a seminar with the JCPD on identifying Metahumans in emergency environments (Nightwing was the keynote speaker). When Cyborg was washing his dishes, Changeling made an appearance, grabbing a protein bar and challenging the cybernetic wonder to a round of Gamestation. Cyborg agreed, and over the next few hours the two managed to break another three records, though none quite so lofty as the Titan's challenge course. It was only during the third hour of gaming that Changeling broke the routine.

"So, you know how they're remaking Cretacious Planet?" He led, neither man taking their eyes form the simulated combat in front of them.

"Yeah, looks like it's going to be pretty good," Cyborg replied dismissively. "They haven't released a trailer yet, have they? Are they even done with casting?"

"Yeah, they got the casting done," Changeling grimaced as his character took damage. "They're about to start filming on an island not too far up the coast, some private landowner wants to turn it into a theme park/resort after they use it, so they got a discount to use it and leave the set pieces when they're done." He paused to execute a particularly complex combo.

"So we're getting a theme park nearby soon too? Awesome." If Cyborg suspected that this conversation was leading somewhere particular, his voice didn't betray it.

"Yeah, but right now it's all about the movie," Changeling sat back as they completed the level and waited for the next to load. A false indifference creeped into his voice "Which I've been invited to consult on."

_That_got Cyborg's attention. "Wait, what? They want you to consult on a summer blockbuster? How'd you get that gig?"

Changeling grinned at his friend's dumbfounded expression. "How many people do you know who can actually _become_ a triceratops or Velociraptor? Or tell you how they'd act in a certain situation?" Cyborg thought about it and bobbed his head at the point. "Also, I _may _have saved their zoologist's life three weeks ago..." Changeling added slyly.

Cyborg accessed his memory banks… "Wait," his voice sounded incredulous. "The hot chick in the hotel fire? The one with really blonde hair, like white-blonde?"

"Yup, that's her," Changeling replied, grinning. "Turns out she graduated from Jump Central University with degrees in genetics and zoology last year and got picked up to work on the film. She pitched the idea to the director after I flew her down from the 16th floor as a pterodactyl, and he gave her permission to offer me six figures just to look over the script before they start shooting, more if I have to help them re-write or shoot the film."

"Well, all right!" Cyborg was excited for his friend. "Look at you, Mr. Big Shot, working on a multi-million dollar movie, and with a lovely lady, to boot."

Changeling laughed and shook his head. "Down, Cy, down. It's just an offer at this point, I haven't taken it, I haven't even talked to Nightwing about it yet."

"Psh," Cyborg dismissed, "what's there to talk about? It's a great opportunity, shouldn't take you out of action much if you're just consulting, and it's always nice to have some money in the bank."

As a general rule, the Titans didn't have much need for money. Nightwing managed the team's finances and expenditures, though they never really asked where the money came from. For personal spending, the Titans each received a small salary from the city in order to list them as private security consultants. Cyborg also licensed some of his minor patents to the military or research labs to fund his expensive technology needs (though he also got grants from Star Labs every now and then), and Starfire and Raven both had endorsement deals (well, Raven had the Japanese gum company, Starfire had half a dozen cosmetics and apparel companies fighting to fund her love of shopping), but Changeling and Nightwing operated with so little overhead outside of their hero identities that occasional checks from their "other teams" (the Doom Patrol and the Batman, respectively) were enough to support their free time.

Though changing that situation certainly held an appeal.

"Besides," Cyborg continued, voice growing mischievous, "There's a lovely young woman who loves animals, weird genes, and being rescued by green men in the picture. It's like you were made for each other."

Changeling just laughed, letting the good-natured teasing slide. "Well, it'd certainly be nice chance to get out of the tower without having to arrest someone." He paused, considering. "You know what, I think I'm going to go email her back, tell her I'll review the script." He hopped up, jumping the couch and making his way to the door. "Then I've got some errands to run in town, probably hit that new vegan place for dinner. Care to join me?"

"Man, ain't nobody wanna join you at a tofu bar."

"Your loss," Changeling called as the doors slid closed behind him.

Cyborg chuckled, shaking his head as he powered off the Gamestation. _Good to see the green bean getting some feminine attention. _He sobered a little. J_ust hope this one turns out better than the last._

* * *

Changeling released a deep breath as the door to his room slid shut. _I knew Cy would latch on to the zoologist piece. _He felt a little guilty, manipulating his friend like that, but every ounce of what he'd said had been true. The thing he hadn't mentioned was that he'd received that offer two weeks ago and initially declined it, worried that it would pull him from his "day job." Now, with the events of the past 24 hours, he was happy the offer was still available. _Working on the movie will be fun, and make an excellent excuse to disappear every now and then, _he reasoned as he fired up the Titan's secure email server. _For tonight though, "errands in town" will have to do._

With that, he focused on the email at hand.

_To: Rose.w _

_ Ms. Wilson, is the offer to consult on Cretaceous Planet still open? _

_ -Changeling _

* * *

A/N: Mwahahaha, I love that twist! for those of you who don't know, Rose Wilson is the daughter of Slade Wilson, and a villian (to the best of my knowledge) in the TT comics... She goes by "Ravager." So, what do you think? Drop me a review, this could go any number of directions and I'd like to hear which one you guys would like to see most.

-TwistedPremise


	11. A Rose By Any Other Name

Hello, dear readers! Yes, it is truly I, TwistedPremise, returned from the dreaded land of AFK and "the real world" to bring you a new chapter! I'm seriously sorry about bailing on the story like that, I never intended to do so or leave this story pre-completion, it just kinda ended up on the back burner while i dealt with other stuff. In any case, major thanks to all my reviewers, your feedback ultimately shaped how this chapter came together more than you can ever imagine, so thank you. I know I entered some dangerous waters introducing Rose Wilson to the story, but I trust that this solution will satisfy all my readers' concerns. In any case, I'll give my disclaimer and shut up now: I own nothing of the Teen Titans, not even a costume. (Though if I had one, it'd be a Slade or Red X costume, sorry.) As always, leave a review and I'll try to get back to you soon!

* * *

As Changeling was composing his brief email, Raven stirred from her crash-nap feeling remarkably refreshed. She blinked against the sunlight streaming from her curtain-less and cracked windows and stretched, popping her back twice. She could feel the remains of what must have been an incredibly pleasant dream fading, but she couldn't remember what it was.

_Reason was right, _she admitted. _It's amazing what a few hours sleep can do._

She took note of her room around her with frustration. _This is the worst it's been since I was 17. _Books, glass shards from her vanity, and cloth from her curtains littered the floor, as well as a few feathers she'd missed from cleaning up last night. The window was cracked in a large spiderweb pattern, and it would take one of her better reconstruction spells to recover the bookshelf. Finally, her bed sheets were twisted into a tangled mess. The fitted sheet had been pulled off two corners, her comforter was only halfway on the bed, and while Raven's right leg was entangled in her sheets her left was uncovered entirely.

_That's odd, I'm normally dead-still in my sleep. _She mused._ I'd remember if I had a nightmare. _She paused, _and I wouldn't be this well rested. _

Dismissing it, she considered returning to Nevermore to talk things out with Reason. _I'll take care of my room first, _she decided. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that it'd been almost 24 hours since she'd had anything more than a cup of tea. _Then food_. Given a little distance from the "incident," and how she was feeling after her nap, Nevermore didn't seem so urgent a concern, anyway.

She extricated herself from the sheets and swung her feet over to her shoes, mindful of the glass pieces. She idly went about picking up the pieces of glass with obsidian energy, collecting them in front of the vanity. _It was just a daydream, _she reasoned, _a fanciful act of imagination about an attractive young man. I really shouldn't be surprised, people have those all the time, and I'm hardly the first to acknowledge his new form's appearance. _She snorted at the memory of how he'd crowed when HERO magazine ranked him over Cyborg in their "50 hottest heroes" issue. They'd actually given him credit for the pointed ears… _and I can't blame them. _

Raven's step faltered, and she glanced around quickly to determine if anything had broken, but the room was still. Releasing a sigh of relief, Raven arranged the glass she'd collected in front of the vanity mirror, took a deep breath, and concentrated: "Restituo."

She'd researched the technique for this spell to mitigate the weekly maintenance she'd ask Cyborg for shortly after moving in to the tower, and since then it'd saved her thousands of dollars and countless explanations she'd rather not give. The glass turned black, flowed like water to form one puddle, then flew to the surface of the mirror. It spread itself to cover the desired area, then the black faded to reveal a smooth, reformed surface.

Raven grinned and moved toward the window to repeat the process. As she watched the black energy spread across the thin fractures in the bulletproof surface, she wondered at her mental transformation. _I seriously overreacted… I knew there was an… attraction… to Garfield, Affection made that perfectly clear last night. I should have expected something like that, especially after his spar with Nightwing… _

She felt her face heat up at the memory as the black energy faded from the window. _No, _she closed her eyes and allowed the feeling to dissipate. _This is an emotion, just like any other. Emotions do not define or control me. They come, they go, and I've been managing mine my entire life. I can handle this. _

She opened her eyes and surveyed her room, as though daring something to crack and defy her. Nothing did.

She gave a slight nod of satisfaction, and set about arranging her curtains for magical repair. _Who was it that Knowledge said contributed to make that happen again? Imagination, Affection, Timid, and Happy? _She released the magic and watched the tattered edges of the curtain threads knit themselves together. _I thought Fear was __opposed__ to Affection? _ She lifted the edges of the curtain back up to the rod and threaded it through, levitating from the ground to do so.

The answer came to her as she turned to address the bookshelf. _No, fear isn't directly opposed to affection, just to taking action that might be risky. _She righted the bookshelf with a though, collecting wood splinters that had broken off the shelves. _There was no risk in a private moment like that… at least, not beyond the obvious. _

All the pieces were in place: "molior, restituo, perfectus." Raven felt the energy drain from her as the spell regenerated the wood into solid planks once again.

_So, now what? _She wondered, moving to restore the tangled mess of her bedsheets. _What do I do about this? Does this change anything? Sure, I'm attracted to him. I've been attracted to other guys before. Okay, he's sweet and kind and occasionally funny when he's not trying. And yes, he has been there for me when I've needed it and genuinely cares about me… but none of that changes anything. I still don't know if there's anything… there. Or what it would look like if there was potential for… something. _Her ears reddened at her pre-nap memory. _It certainly wouldn't look like that. _

Her stomach growled as she finished smoothing her blanket. _Okay, lunch time. _She glanced at the clock and blinked in surprise. _Rather, dinner time. _She took one last glance around the room to ensure everything was in good order, then turned and headed to the common room, purposefully avoiding looking at the communicator beside her door as she summoned it to the empty spot on her belt. _I just hope the evening is uneventful, I've had enough drama for the past 24 hours._

* * *

It seemed fate had finally given her a break as the doors to the common room panned open. Cyborg was at the stove, idly stirring a pot of what smelled like beef stew while his attentions remained on a panel in his other forearm. He didn't seem to notice her entrance, which was unusual, but Raven was too busy confirming the absence of a green shapeshifter to think anything of it.

"Afternoon, Victor" she called out, opting for his off-the-clock name as she made for her tea cabinet.

The semi-mechanical man jolted slightly, nearly dropping his stirring spoon as he recovered his senses. "Oh, hey Raven." He composed himself as she turned away to retrieve her kettle. "Glad you decided to rejoin civilization. You all healed up?"

Her tone made it clear she was rolling her eyes. "It was only a localized second-degree burn, nothing to be concerned about."

"And that's why we worry about it for you. Because you don't" Cyborg quipped, his caring tone allaying any potential sharpness to his words. "But it don't take three-quarters of a day to heal yourself, what's kept you?"

Raven opted for honesty, mostly. "I took a nap. Overload left me drained, and waking up early for practice didn't help. Add meditation and some cleaning, and now I'm here."

Cyborg chuckled. "Man, never know what to expect around here. The same fight that knocks you outta commission for a day turns the green bean into a record-breaking ball of energy. Can't you two find a happy medium?"

That was as good a segue as any. "Speaking of Garfield, where is he? Hiding from your six-meat stew?"

"Hey now, just one meat today, thank you. And he said he was running errands in-town, including checking out some veg-head restaurant, won't be back til late."

That let Raven off the hook for the evening. "And 'NightStar'?" Raven queried, sarcasm in her tone.

"Oh, you saw the tabloids, did you?" Cyborg grinned. "I'm gonna get a couple light-years of mileage out of this one, 'Wing's gonna hate it. Getting plenty of traction online though, surprised nobody thought of that one years ago. Anyway, they should be back soon, they're at the police convention downtown."

Then a thought occurred to Cyborg. "Hey, when do you read the tabloids? I thought you hated that 'nonsensical, vapid-minded garbage.'"

Raven was perhaps a bit _too _composed with her response. "Starfire showed me an article. How'd _you _see it?"

Cyborg just tapped the side of his head. "I got a couple web-crawlers monitoring traffic about us, just in case something slanderous or dangerous pops up. It picked up the new phrase."

Raven hummed her placating acceptance of the excuse before indicating the boiling pot on the stove. "I was going to make pasta, but that smells delicious. Is there enough for two?"

Cyborg just chuckled. "You have to ask?" He pulled out two bowls, and they sat down to eat.

* * *

Raven was washing dishes as Cyborg replaced his spices when Nightwing and Starfire came in. "Friend Raven!" Starfire called out cheerfully, though she refrained from a hug this time. "You are recovered?"

Raven let out a little huff. "For Azar's sake, I'm fine. It was a small burn and an energy draining shield, I'm healed and rested, not to mention fully fueled on Cyborg's cooking. I'm fine."

"Glad to hear it," Nightwing cut in with a mischevious grin, "because I was hoping you'd be ready to go on patrol with me tonight."

Raven remained composed, but Cyborg winced dramatically for her. "Dang Rae, you walked into that one." He turned to Nightwing. "Wait, why Raven? She just got done with patrol last night, when she got in a pretty nasty scrape. I can go."

Nightwing shrugged. "If you want to, but normally breaking the record on the obstacle course earns you three days off of evening patrols. I'm guessing Changeling's out on the town tonight, taking advantage of that right now?"

Raven cut Cyborg off. "It's all right, I'm happy to get out of the tower a bit. I didn't actually do anything at training this morning, so this is only fair."

Cyborg nodded, then grinned. "In that case, I'm gonna go grab tickets for the Jump City Jumpshot's game tonight." If anyone noticed the plurality of the word "tickets," they didn't mention it as he left for the garage.

"I will go in search of Silkie," Starfire declared, flying through the door after her mechanical friend.

Raven finished with the last bowl and set it on the drying rack. "Shall we?"

Nightwing gestured deferentially to the door. "After you."

* * *

It was an uneventful patrol, for the most part. Raven had expected Nightwing to stick with her for a while to make sure she was recovered and break off on his own after a while, but two hours in he was still jumping across rooftops beside her as she flew through the town. Suddenly his communicator chirped, and he called her over. "There's an accident involving a semi on the loop half a mile from us, blocking three lanes of traffic. Nobody hurt, but police could use your help moving the semi."

Raven nodded, understanding. It wasn't their normal line of work, but the Titans would occasionally help out with mundane things like this when they were closer to the incident than the authorities. Particularly when Nightwing wanted to demonstrate- in full view of the inevitable traffic/news copter- that Raven was back at full strength. Nothing encouraged crime like thinking a Titan was out of commission.

Raven was a quarter mile to the crash before she realized Nightwing was still following her. She slowed to let him catch up. "What are you doing?"

"Going to take statements," he responded.

"No, I mean, why are you following me. You never follow me during patrols. You take one route, I take another; we cover more area that way. It's standard Titan procedure. The only person you break that pattern for is Starfire, and that's for obvious reasons."

Nightwing coughed, lips pursing at her analysis. "Fair enough. I've been meaning to ask you something."

"And the past two hours haven't been opportunity enough?"

"Been too busy jumping rooftops. You're not exactly taking a convenient path for non-fliers."

Raven hadn't realized it, but he was right. She hadn't been going out of her way to make it hard on him, but she wasn't exactly taking his limitations into consideration with her flight path. It was a credit to his athleticism that she hadn't lost him an hour ago, actually. _Okay, but why does any of this matter in the first place? _"I didn't realize you were trying to turn patrol into social hour," she teased, her usual monotone betraying nothing.

He just snorted, a grin conceding the point. "Fine, then we'll take a break from patrol." He flipped his communicator open, checked the screen briefly, and returned it to his pocket without breaking stride. "Take care of the semi, and meet me atop the Steiley building in 15 minutes."

"That's a thirty minute drive from here."

"Lucky I'm not driving," he quipped, and took an abrupt ninety-degree turn left, leaving Raven to deal with the crash scene she'd just arrived to.

"Guess I get to take statements, then" she commented to herself as she floated down to the expressway below her.

* * *

It only took ten minutes to clear the site, get statements, and return traffic to its usual flow pattern for dusk in Jump City, so with a few short jumps Raven was able to teleport to the roof of the Steiley building three minutes early. It still wasn't fast enough.

"Over here," Nightwing called out from the corner of the flat roof, crouched behind the ubiquitous parapet as he surveyed the street below.

She floated over, entrusting the shadow of late dusk to conceal her.

"So," she mused aloud, "what question could be so important that you'd break patrol, and why all the way out here?"

They were on the far edge of town, past downtown and on the edge of the mid-density development before the city grid gave way to suburban-style housing. The Steiley building itself was just an old historic four-story building that had been renovated to a mall, and it was the tallest thing from here to the old mining buildings at the foot of the mountains outside of town.

Nightwing paused before answering. "Have you noticed anything strange about Changeling recently?"

It was fortunate Nightwing's attention was on the street, rather than on her, because Raven stiffened for a full second before relaxing enough to respond with her typical detached tone. "What do you mean?" she stalled, buying time to see what exactly her detective-trained teammate might have noticed.

"Did you two argue recently, or did something happen between you?" His tone was gentler than his words, but Raven still bristled at his inquiry.

"As a matter of fact, no, we haven't argued in quite a while." She let her tone contain a touch more finality than necessary. "Why would you assume that something's going on with us, if something's going on with him at all? For that matter, you still haven't explained what you think is strange about him in the first place." She folded her arms in front of her, letting her displeasure with the situation be known. _What the hell is he thinking?_

* * *

_Interesting, _Nightwing noted, hearing the chill in her voice. _Unusually defensive about both herself and Changeling, though she's being honest about not arguing with him recently. Also, she used "us" too casually, normally she maintains more distance in her language than that._

He took note of her posture in the reflection of the broken glass he'd positioned before she arrived: definitely defensive, and he could have sworn she froze up when he first mentioned Changeling. That was the great thing about domino masks; he could look like he was watching the street when in fact he was looking elsewhere. _Definitely comes in handy when Starfire's around too. _

But now it was time to back off. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it. It's just that he's been unusually active recently. When I came back from patrol last night he was still up." He turned to face her now, shifting his posture for a more casual, familiar effect.

"He does that all the time," she quipped. "He said he was feeling unusually awake after the Overload fight, said he was going to go play gamestation when he left, if I remember correctly."

"Funny. He never made it to the common room."

That brought her up short, though only for a second. "Then where was he?"

"The gym."

Her eyes widened briefly. "2:30? He was in the gym for five hours?"

"Apparently." He opted for a casual tone, trying to keep her talking. _Interesting that she knows when Star and I came in. Only way she could have known that is if she felt us arrive empathically, which means she was still awake. _

Suddenly, Raven grinned. "Explains how he dominated you this morning. He was training for it, that's when he developed that combo that put you out of commission."

"Maybe," Nightwing conceded, not ready to divulge the insights he'd gleaned from his conversation with the animorph- or his discovery about the fight itself- just yet. "But what it doesn't explain is what he's doing at a random cafe on the far side of town on his night off… or who he's meeting."

"Excuse me?" Raven's eyes widened at that revelation.

"He's across the corner, seated on the patio of the _Corner Cafe_ as we speak," Nightwing elaborated. "Two drink menus, but he's refrained from ordering anything but an appetizer-which he's only picked at." He gestured beside him, offering Raven a better vantage point to survey the patio in question.

Raven accepted the perch, narrowing her gaze as she attempted to pinpoint her teammate. "Where is he?"

"Third table from the right corner. Wearing civvies gear, blue jeans, black cap, and a red button-up, though the fact that I've never seen that in his wardrobe makes a lot more sense now."

Raven's face betrayed confliction even as she identified her teammate on the busy patio. "This is interesting, sure, but why are we here? What Garfield- or any of us, for that matter- does with his free time has never concerned us, why is…"

She tapered off as Changeling stood, rising to greet whomever he had been waiting for. A slim young woman, 22, 23 maybe, with bleach-blond hair and a gymnast's figure greeted him with a glowing smile. Her black pencil skirt and jacket and teal blouse suggested she worked for a law firm or similarly formal office, but her tan and ponytail suggested an active and outdoorsy personality. Nightwing pulled his binoculars out to get a better look. _Polished but functional fingernails, she works with her hands, possibly a laboratory? Flats, too, not heels. Again, professional but functional. No visible scars, tattoos, or birthmarks. Stud earrings, minimal makeup, energetic in a way that suggests recent career success. _

Changeling and his new acquaintance sat, and Nightwing stole a glance at Raven. Raven normally didn't betray much- if anything- even to his trained eye, which is why it took him a minute to realize what he was looking at. _Furrowed brow but wide eyes, pursed lips but soft chin, that's not just suspicion or curiosity+, that's confliction of several extremes. But which, and why?_

* * *

Raven crouched on the roof of a mall, squinting at the last rays of light, reeling from the emotional maelstrom going on inside her head. Affection and Happy were waging war with Sadness, Anger, and Reason, and it wasn't going well for the more positive aspects. Happiness was all but extinguished as Sorow surged, and though affection would never desist, she found her assertions all but drowned in the maelstrom of frustration. It wasn't until the power in her started to swell accordingly that Raven closed her eyes and forced order on her mindscape. Her mantra echoed in every crevice of every territory until the raging ceased, and she opened her eyes knowing she'd need to explain herself to Nightwing. Calling on Reason, idly wondered whether her demonic heritage was receiving some sort of divine punishment…

* * *

Nightwing diverted his eyes from the empath and returned them to the table as she spoke. "Well, there's your answer. He was working out because he's got a date, probably couldn't sleep because he was nervous. He strayed from his normal off-duty routine to have coffee with a beautiful young woman because that's what men do, and the fact that we took a break from patrol to spy on him while he did so is just more evidence that you haven't gotten over your compulsive need to be in control of everything."

Nightwing opted not to say anything. She was right, they shouldn't be here, especially now that the situation was so clearly innocuous, but she was also reacting far and away stronger than he'd expect. _She's rattled, but why? _

"Now, if you'll excuse me, we've got a city to patrol," she continued, her tone clear that any attempt to follow would be futile.

And then she was gone.

Nightwing sighed, shaking his head. _How did this go so wrong? _It seemed so simple: Changeling admitted to struggling with the beast again, then somehow accessed it during their sparring this morning with some cue from Raven. Raven then leaves training early and doesn't re-emerge until Changeling's already gone: on "errands in town," no less. Factor it all in together and it only made sense to check in on Changeling's bizarre behavior, and to bring Raven along in hopes that she might shed some light on the situation. _But clearly that didn't work out. _

_Something's going on here, and if it's not one issue between Raven and Changeling, then it's two separate issues overlapping enough I can't figure out where one starts and the other ends… _He took a deep breath, acknowledging the inevitable. _ I need backup, and there's only one person I know who can sort out a mess like this. _He flipped open his communicator and keyed a private line.

"Hey Star? Looks like a quiet night again, want to join me for surveillance of a concert in the square?"

* * *

Changeling was having a good evening. His pre-order for the new _Pirate's Code: Guilds _was placed, the new restaurant _Garden Fresh_ served a wicked black bean burger with sweet potato fries and coleslaw, and his new co-worker Ms. Wilson had offered to meet him that evening to discuss and hand over an advance script of the new Cretaceous Planet movie. He arranged to meet her at a fairly nice café/restaurant conveniently located to the edge of town, and opted to enjoy the brisk evening air with an outside table. _Lucky I can change shirts on a whim, this place is nicer than I thought,_ he noted, as the waitress brought his overpriced stuffed mushrooms to the table.

It wasn't long until Ms. Wilson arrived, looking surprisingly professional for a fresh college graduate with a job handling animals for a movie.

"Hi, Ms. Wilso…"

"Oh no, please, call me Rose," she insisted with a light laugh. "You've saved my life- thanks again, by the way- and are technically above me in the production hierarchy, let's not stand on ceremony."

"Okay, Rose it is." Changeling could already tell he liked Ms. Wil- Rose. There was something bubbly about her that made her seem fresh and vibrant. It didn't hurt that they were probably only two years apart, max.

They sat and the waitress appeared, ready for their orders.

When she left with a request for two iced teas, Rose immediately went to remove her jacket. "Sorry about my formal wear, I just had to sit through a two-hour meeting with the director and studio bigwigs about our production schedule, and they're always dressed to the nines for those meetings. Normally it's all super boring, too, but you should have seen their faces when I announced you'd agreed to review the script for us! Of course, all they care about is money, but they were going crazy! You can't _buy _celebrity endorsement like that, they want to put you as 'assistant director' or at the very least 'screenwriter' on the posters and trailers!"

The waitress returned with their drinks, and Rose took a quick sip before continuing. "But anyway, I'm super excited you decided to help. Turns out, there's a minor part of a zoologist in the newest version of the script, and they offered me the chance to fill it since I already know the lingo and animals, so I'll be in your meetings with the actors. I'm consulting on any writing that requires animals, too, so the studio knows what we can do with live animals and what we'll have to CGI, so I'll see you in those meetings too."

Suddenly, Changeling was starting to feel overwhelmed. "Wow… uh, how many writers are there, exactly?"

"Well," she paused to think, "there have been four, but right now, counting you there are only two, plus two consultants: me and the CGI specialist. And really, you're more of a consultant like me, though they'll make it seem like you were more involved in the credits. Really what they'll do is take your feedback, decide if it helps make the movie more believable/more marketable and if so make as few changes as they can while still following your advice. Does that make sense?"

Changeling breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, yeah, that helps a lot. I was starting to get nervous I'd bit off more than I can chew."

"Oh, I doubt that. I once saw you bite through steel chain."

Changeling laughed. "Yeah, that was a mistake. My teeth hurt for a week."

They shared a good laugh at that one, and Changeling found himself surprisingly comfortable with his new role in this film.

"So, do I half to call you 'changeling,' or do you go by anything else when you're not a superhero?"

Changeling almost snorted his tea, and degenerated into a coughing fit when the liquid caught in his throat.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean…"

He put a hand up to cut her off. "It's fine, you just caught me off guard, is all." He took a breath to pause and think. "I don't really go by anything else, really. I'm always kind of on-the-clock, you know?" Rose looked disappointed, but nodded.

"But if you want… call me Mark."

Her face brightened as she pondered the name. "Mark, huh? I can see that." She raised her glass in a casual toast. "Nice to meet you Mark, and here's to working together."

Changeling smiled and raised his glass. "I'll drink to that."

* * *

Almost an hour and two appetizers later, Rose excused herself to drive home. As she did she left Changeling a thick ream of paper from her messenger bag, nearly 400 pages in all, marked "confidential" across the front, and the cheerful reminder that she'd made some notes in the margins for sections he ought to pay specific attention to.

Changeling had every intention of reading it… just not tonight. He stashed the script in a mailbox to an abandoned duplex under cover of dark and his eyes drifted to the base of the mountains just outside the city limits, defined by the stars they blocked out. He shifted into a greyhound and started running, knowing he'd shift several times before he made it out of the city, and several after that before he was done for the night. As he ran, he could feel the rumble in his chest swell, and the gravel voice echoed in his head: _You cannot outrun me. You cannot exhaust me. You cannot kill me. Sooner or later I will be recognized, and you __**will**__ claim what you desire. _

His pace picked up, and he fought back the temptation to shift to something more predatory in the quiet suburban neighborhood he ran through. _I am more than my baser instincts. _

The voice rumbled as only a predator can. _For now, perhaps…._

* * *

Changeling returned to the tower, script in hand, at approximately three in the morning. He was exhausted, and wanted nothing more than a bowl of cereal before bed- a habit that put him to sleep as well as Nyquil would to a normal human being. Opting out of a spoon, he walked out of the kitchen drinking his cereal from the bowl with one hand as he let the manuscript open to a random page with his other.

A tidy string of penmanship in the corner caught his eye, and what he read sent the bowl and its contents crashing to the floor. Changeling stood, paralyzed in the center of the hall, staring in horror at the neat blue lettering. "No…" he whispered, unable to comprehend how two sentences could bring a whole world crashing down.

**_Changeling, please help me. Slade's back, and he plans to use me to destroy the Titans once and for all. _**

* * *

Eh? Ehhh? What'dya think? Poor Raven, I hated to do that to her, but I really have to explore this side of her before we can move on... Anyway, i'm not sure this was one of my more inspired chapters, though it certainly moved the plot along... Anyway, let me know what you think, I really do listen, I promise!

-TwistedPremise


	12. What We Didn't See, Part 1

Thank you again to all of my reviewers! I love that you guys were faithful enough to pick the story back up after I'd left it off for so long, it was great to see some familiar usernames again (and meet some new ones.) Your feedback actually inspired this chapter, a direction I had no intention of going but I think works really nicely. Let's see what you guys think:

Disclaimer: Seriously, I don't own anything related to the Teen Titans in any of their forms. Though if Beast Boy had a series of plushies, I'd own all of his forms... (Yeah, that doesn't sound creepy)

* * *

_Changeling may be an excellent tracker, but he's surprisingly easy prey._ The shapeshifter had spent the last half hour sitting in a café, munching on stuffed mushrooms and making pleasant small talk, completely unaware of the incredible danger he was in. _I almost feel sorry for him._

* * *

Later, Changeling wandered casually down the block, completely unaware of the presence behind him as his pursuer paid special attention to the wind currents. _No use sticking to the shadows if we cannot stay downwind. _The presence had followed the animorph four blocks from the patio to a run-down neighborhood with several derelict buildings when he started to stir.

At first it appeared he had detected the foreign entity behind him, but rather than focus on the concealing shadow of the alley Changeling made a simple sweep of the street before turning towards an abandoned duplex and made his way up the walkway.

_It's like he's __**asking**__ to be jumped, _the shadow murmered as it prepared to move quickly and without mercy.

But then Changeling did something surprising: he withdrew the ream of paper from inside his jacket and- glancing to both sides- dropped it into the mail box. Task completed, he gazed out away from the city towards the forested mountains and shifted. A green greyhound- greenhound?- ran with startling swiftness down the street, and while the shadow could have pursued, it was paralyzed by choice.

_Pursue, or investigate? _

Ultimately, curiosity won out, and as the Changeling faded into the distance the figure emerged from the shadows to cross the narrow road. Expecting the changeling's return at any moment, it wasted no time in securing the manuscript and then… disappeared.

* * *

Raven emerged atop the Steiley building again, manuscript in hand, as she confirmed she hadn't been followed or detected. Granted, her position was rather exposed from the air, but there were no tall buildings or other vantage points nearby so her presence was only detectable by a few unique individuals, none of whom had any reason to look for her this far from her patrol route. Nonetheless, she cast a quick spell of early warning to alert her to the approach of unwanted visitors, and turned her attention to the pages in her hand.

_Now, perhaps we'll get some answers. _In truth, Raven was confused. After chastising Nightwing and fleeing the scene, she found herself returning to the rooftop less than half an hour later to resume surveillance of Changeling's dinner companion. Indeed, had one taken a photo of her vigilance with Nightwing before the blonde had arrived and a second photo 45 minutes later, they might have mistaken Raven for an permanent, immobile fixture on the rooftop.

Of course, had they looked at her eyes they would have known the truth.

Raven's eyes were not their normal hue, not by a long shot. They glowed crimson from lash to pupil, a sinister look that passionately defied her pacifist origins.

This was the only difference, however. Raven still only had two eyes, her normal figure, and her attire was her crime-fighting standard. Now she stood in the dark of the night, her eyes unnaturally bright in the cloudy night, as she carefully opened the first page of the thick document.

**Changeling, thanks again for consulting on this for us, **she read in black, feminine handwriting, confusion and clarity mixing behind her furrowed brow. **–Rose**

_The blonde has a name, _she mused, the sharpness in her mental tone unbidden and unnoticed. _Let's see what other notes she might be leaving him…_

A quarter of the way into flipping through the manuscript, Raven's eyes began to dim. _It's just a script. A script and notes about animals. _She flipped back to the casting sheet: _Cretaceous Planet? _She scanned the names quickly: _there. Rose Wilson: Zoologist._

The anger and frustration began to fade, though another, bitter emotion abated only slightly as reassurance rose. _They're doing a movie about dinosaurs, and Changeling's helping… That wasn't a date, it was a business meeting… _

Raven's mental state shifted: Happiness surged, fear and anger shrank as Reason chastised them for their ridiculous assumptions. _And to think, I was ready to attack him for… what, exactly? What in the unknown depths of my psyche had me ready to pounce on my teammate like that? _

A bitter taste welled up in her mouth as the answer came to her. _Jealousy. _She'd only felt it fleetingly before, but she knew the feeling from being near Starfire when Nightwing put her to the side for his work. _But that was different, they're in a relationship, and this was much too strong for that…_

Reason supplied a rare out-of-nevermore revelation then: _Jealousy is a combination of Affection, Fear, and Anger. I'm still coming to terms with Affection; and Fear and Anger are two of my more volatile emotions. Putting those three together…._

It certainly explained what she was doing here, at least.

_This is ridiculous, _Raven thought, snapping the manuscript shut. _I was right to chastise Nightwing, even if I misunderstood the situation. Changeling hasn't done anything wrong, yet I'm stalking him on his time off and invading his privacy by reading a script and notes meant for him. _

She made to leave, but something brought her up short. _But… if this is just a business arrangement, why hasn't he told us about it yet? And why the café? Couldn't he have just picked up the manuscript from their offices? And why send a blonde zoologist his age to give it to him? _

Her eyes hardened, and she regarded the document with new suspicion. _He's going to be working with her… a cute zoologist about his age… a cute __**blonde**__ zoologist… If she has even the slightest intention towards him, it's going to be very difficult for him to resist. _For reasons Raven would vehemently deny, that worried her.

She placed one hand on either cover of the manuscript. _Fortunately, she spent a great deal of time with this, all of it focused on Changeling. If I'm right, her thoughts and emotions will have left trace imprints in these pages, and I can access those…._

Raven closed her eyes and reached for her empathic senses. Normally, her sense spread around her like a dome, lightly touching everything and everyone; getting stronger the closer she was to them. Now, however, she focused her attention to the space between her palms. She visualized herself diving deep into the pages, into the ink pressed upon them where Rose's essence would be strongest. She focused first on what she couldn't feel: there was no trace of anger, deceit, or malice. Likewise, there was no trace of love, lust, or even friendly affection.

Raven breathed a sigh of relief as she prepared to pull back her empathic senses when a burst of revelation exploded from the pages. There, in the middle of it all lie a powerful mixture of fear, desperation, and… hope?

Raven ripped the pages open to a point roughly in the center and started flipping, following the specter of whatever she felt calling to her. _There. _

She was wholly unprepared for what she found.

**Changeling, please help me. Slade's back, and he plans to use me to destroy the Titans once and for all. **

In an instant, everything changed.

Raven grew several feet, and her cloak now flowed to the rooftop where eddies of black energy twisted and coiled. Her teeth were sharpened to points, and her eyes- still only two- burned blood red again. She let out a low hiss as her energy caught the book before it could hit the roof. Suspending the offending material in front of her, Raven willed the page to turn. Sure enough, the message continued…

**Yes, my name is Rose Wilson, but if you want to know who I really am look up "Ravager" in your database. I'll bet you have a file on me.**

Raven intended to do _precisely _that… as soon as she was done ripping the blonde to pieces. She turned the page again…

**Slade Wilson- Yeah, that Slade- is my father, and he's raised me to be like him… but I don't want to be. **

Another page.

**I've done things, Changeling. Things no one should ever do, and when I stopped doing them, he made me. **

_Yeah, right…_ Raven snarled and turned the page again.

**He's got me on some drug. I don't know what, but he puts it in my food, my drink. It overrides my motor control, makes me do what he tells me. **

Another page.

**It makes me strong, but sometimes I forget things, whole days, even. Things don't make any sense or I can't tell what's real.**

_Liar, _Raven wanted to scream.

** And I can never disobey him, even when it wears off, because if I go too long without another dose… it will kill me. **

_Good. _Raven's spiteful side screamed. _I saw the way you talked to him, laughed at his jokes. He's not __**that **__funny. You set him up. You want him to like you, just so you can do __**this **__to him? I ought to kill you myself. _

**Please, don't be angry. He's ordered me to gather intel, identify weaknesses and opportunities against your team. Eventually, he'll ask me to use them. **

_I hope he does. That way I can take you down myself._

**I know you have no reason to trust me, but this is the best I can do to warn you. Assume every conversation with me is bugged, he does that.**

Now Raven was just confused. _Why bug her if she's working for him?_

**He knows I want out; he doesn't trust me. I don't know where he is, or what he has planned, just that he shows up sometimes with my drugs and instructions. **

Raven paused. it sounded incredible, unbelievable even. But this was Slade; a man who once made a deal with the devil to destroy the Earth, and then helped destroy the devil. Anything was possible...

**He's told me not to tell you about any of this, but the meds wore off during the meeting, so I've got about 24 hours of free will before my next dose.**

Another page.

**Whatever you do, don't try to rescue me. If you succeed, I'll die from withdrawals. If you fail, he'll kill me and just change his plan. **

Another page.

**And don't tell your teammates either. He's got them under surveillance, especially Nightwing, and he'll know the instant they do. **

Raven was torn. She wanted to dismiss the warning as a trick, a trap to isolate Changeling, but she'd sensed no deceit with her scan.

**For now, just keep working on the script, we can use it as cover for passing messages. **

_What is this, middle school? _

**Oh, and one more thing. I'm sporadically prescient. I get glimpses of the future, here and there, but can't control them. **

Raven snorted in dismissal. _Of course you do. _

**Here's the proof: At the café, you'll tell me to call you Mark. Also, don't bet on the Jumpshots tonight.**

_Mark? As in Garfield __**Mark **__Logan? Surely he didn't…_

**Last thing: Don't underestimate him… or me. Remember that fire you saved me from? I set it, because he told me to introduce myself and I had a vision the fire would work... I had full control when I struck the match. **

Raven paled. _Three people died in that fire. Three people we couldn't save in time..._

But the message continued.

**The movie? He's financing it, just to draw you out enough for me to get to you. Millions upon millions of dollars... whatever he's planning, it's bigger than anything he's ever done before. **

_Slade once overthrew three Central American countries… at once. _The sinking feeling in her gut as matched by the shrink of her stature as Raven reverted to normal size, but with her red eyes firmly in place. She closed the pages gently, her jaw hard-set.

_Garfield's going to do exactly what she says. _She realized. _It may be a trap, it may not, it doesn't matter. He'll still go along with it because he won't risk Slade killing her if she gets found out._

She sank into a black pool beneath her feet and reappeared in the shadows of the duplex's porch. Dropping the manuscript back into the wrought-iron box, she took flight back to her patrol route, red eyes showing no signs of dissipating.

_But if he thinks he's going on this fool's errand alone, he's wrong. Dead wrong._


End file.
